There is something you *can* do, though, and that is to use an SSH tunnel to a server with a trusted key - for example, a server where you verified the keys' integrity in person. Then, when you're on the road, connect to the server with your laptop; if the key fingerprint you get doesn't match, assume someone's attempting a man-in-the-middle attack, and don't do anything. In particular, do not log in to the server, of course, in order to prevent leaking your credentials.
If the fingerprints *do* matched, log in to the server normally, then tunnel everything through the ssh connection, and your traffic should be unwatchable even when you're in a potentially hostile environment.
Of course, there are other precautions you may have to take if you want to be really secure overall, but as far as the pure traffic is concerned, this should be pretty foolproof.
The real problem with this is that once a secure connection with a trusted outside machine (for example, an SSH server) has been established, you cannot sniff it anymore. You *might* be able to conduct a man-in-the-middle attack if you start *before* the connection is established, but even then, you probably won't - the public key fingerprint you present to the hijacker (in the airplane) won't match the one in his key database, so unless he's stupid, he simply won't connect at all and the attack (or at least the coordination) won't happen.
Of course, that would be a success in itself (at least if the actual attack is stopped as opposed to the mere coordination of different attacks), but it requires something much stronger than a court warrant that allows you to target a specific suspect individual - you'd have to actively monitor (and route through your application-level gateway) *each and every* single packet that's being sent or received. For everyone in the plane. On every flight. Always.
Suddenly, things don't sound so good anymore, do they? You might still say that you'd rather be a live chump without a right to free speech [1] and so on than a dead one that still has the right, but not everyone'd prefer to live in a 1984-like world. Would you?
Of course, total surveillance of everyone 24 hours a day and 7 days a week, without any privacy at all, in a world where cryptography and private communication is outlawed, would probably make you safer from hijackings and the like, but is that the kind of world you'd want to live in?
Getting back to the original point, the problem with this is not so much that the FBI will or should be allowed to place a wiretap within ten minutes if they get a court warrant allowing them to. As far as I am concerned, they could start wiretapping one second after the OK - there's nothing wrong with that.
What *is* a problem is the fact that this is probably going to be sold as a security improvement, when in reality it is not. A false sense of security does not help anyone - just like blind and unjustified fear does not help, either.
So it's probably still a good idea to remain skeptical for now.
1. Note that the right to free speech includes not only the legal right, but also being able to actually use that right without fear of repression and/or repercussions.
Both Java and C++ are fundamentally object-oriented languages, so what, if I may ask, is wrong with forcing you to use OO design? The only reason I could come up with is that it's a violation of TIMTOWTDI, but it's not as if either Java or C++ are big on that, anyway.
I don't like C++ myself (it's a big, bloated, inflexible mess), but this seems rather silly. If your problems aren't nails (or if you don't want to treat them as such), then don't use a hammer as a tool, but don't complain about the fact that a hammer is, well, a hammer.:) There's plenty of other tools you can use instead.
It's not FOSS, but as far as I'm aware of (which admittedly isn't that far), there is no big company behind SpyBot S&D, at least. It also offers an option to immunise IE by blocking known bad webpages, which I think is an important option even when you don't run IE as your default browser - there are many apps that embed it.
Generally, the problem of unjustified whitelisting of spyware can be solved by running more than one tool. It's a crutch, of course, but it works; what one vendor was bribed to gloss over, another vendor will pick up.
You mean "printer on fire". And that one, funny as it may sound, actually was a valid and true error message, back in the dark ages - see this lkml post for an explanation.:)
Have you ever actually had or met a parrot? They're highly intelligent, and it seems entirely likely that when he gave nonsensical answer, he was simply bored.
You might think that I'm attributing too much personality to a parrot, but just wait until you had one...
How many non-trivial, successful open source software projects aren't written mostly by staff paid to do the job?
That's the wrong question to ask. I'd argue that any piece of open-source software that is non-trivial, successful and serves a purpose that is of interest to companies *will* eventually attract funding, including developers paid for by companies, but that doesn't mean that open-source must have a commercial (paid) developer base to be successful. You have the direction reversed here: success leads to paid development, not vice versa.
The *real* question you'd have to ask is how many successful, non-trivial FOSS projects were *started* by people with a commercial interest (companies), and if you do that, things will certainly look differently. Tools like the GNU system, the Linux kernel itself, PHP, Perl and so on were all started without any commercial help - it was only later on, when they were already successful, that they attracted commercial help. JBoss may be different (or not - I don't know its history), but if I had to make an educated guess, I'd say that the amount of FOSS started by companies is by far the minority.
And of course, that's only looking at FOSS that is of interest to companies, anyway, which gives a skewed picture, since there are several important projects and high-profile projects (not to mention countless smaller ones) that cater to a different target group - namely, end users themselves, who arguably are both more important and more abundant than companies.
You don't have to test every piece of software that uses a dynamic library. Proper unit tests for the library itself will be enough, as long as they're comprehensive and cover the entire API; the only apps that might still break are those that use the library in ways it's not intended to be, but that's really the app developers' own fault then.
Maybe it's just me, but I don't understand what the *National* Arbitration Forum (emphasis mine) has to do with a dispute between Google, which is from the US, and a guy in Russia. Can someone explain that to me?
While I certainly am in favour of the ruling itself, I don't see how a US-american organization could assert authority over handling conflicts that aren't happening in the USA. Did Russia agree to this? What are the rules for arbitrating such matters between people (or entities) from different states, anyway? I imagine that it's regulated on a WTO level or so, but I still find the whole thing rather strange.
If the National Arbitration Forum of Russia (assuming that such a thing exists) decided in favour of a Russian company who sought arbitration against a US citizen, you probably wouldn't feel comfortable with it, either, even if the decision itself was obviously correct.
[W]ould you take advice from a guy on the street named "Driftingwalrus" [...]
If the answer is no, why should I take advice from a guy named "Lord Dweomer"?:)
No flamebait intended, but it doesn't make sense to rag someone for having a funny nickname and posting on Slashdot when you're having a funny nickname and are posting on Slashdot, too. And why should Slashdot readers "NEVER" give legal advice? There certainly are actual lawyers posting here, for example - admittedly, they're (usually) not *your* lawyers, but they still can offer an informed opinion, and the same goes for other people, too, even though the opinion just may be less informed if they don't actually have a legal background.
That being said, the advice to file it away instead of putting it into the garbage is certainly good.
Maybe I'm just playing devil's advocate now, but to me, that sounds a lot like communism. Not in the sense that the Amish society actually could be compared to communism, that is; but your description is akin to descriptions of communism in that it sounds good on paper, but leads to real problems when actually implemented that are conveniently ignored when a more theoretical description is given.
Take, for example, the young man mentioned in a comment above who bought a laptop, and whose bishop took him and the laptop back to the store a few days later to give it back and ask for a refund. Yes, there certainly is a *reason* for this - the bishop didn't just do it because he didn't like the young man and wanted to make him suffer. But still, that's what happened, essentially; the man *wanted* a laptop, but couldn't get one "legally", and when he simply bought one anyway, he lost it again.
I'm sure he wasn't too happy with that, himself. Of course, I do assume here that as an adult, he is able to determine what he really wants (no matter when it's about a laptop or community life or whatever) - one might argue that he simply didn't know or didn't think about the "greater good" of society as a whole, but I think it's necessary to accept that he was aware of what he was doing and its consequences and still reached a decision.
Where does that all put us? Certainly, society as a whole dictating certain behaviour for individuals is not all that uncommon: it's the basic idea behind democracy, after all, that the majority can make decisions, even when not *every* single individual might like them. But there's more to democracy, too - it's also about personal freedom as well as non-interference. The latter concept in particular seems to be violated here: if I do something that doesn't hurt you, then you shouldn't be able to tell me that I can't do it. I derive the basic right to do it from the fact that I have personal freedom; and from the concept of non-interference, I can conclude that if I don't interfere with *your* personal freedom, then it really is OK.
Of course, that is in stark contrast to Amish society, which - as pointed out in the Wired article, for example - does not value individuality and individuals as much as conformity and society as a whole.
And that's OK, too, to a certain extent - if that's what someone wants, that's certainly fine. But it is important to note that in this sense, the Amish can be compared to any other sect (like the Hare Krishna, for example). And like with any other sect, while you may not find someone who will openly *tell* you that they don't like it, there will be people like that - and the mechanics that keep these people in the cults essentially against their will are well-understood. In the case of the Amish, sending people to the outside world without information on the social structures, without friends and so on just serve to reinforce the belief that the "English" world is not for them - and that's essentially a powerful deterrent to keep people from leaving the community or even speaking up against it. If you honestly believe that it's all you have, then are you going to destroy it? Certainly not.
And that's really the gist of the matter. It's all about *choice*: if someone genuinely chooses to live the Amish way, then that's fine, but people also must be given a fair chance to say that they don't want to do so. And contrary to what is claimed by the Amish (and maybe even believed), they don't do that.
Natural selection? There hasn't been any of that in human societies in thousands of years - that particular problem certainly is not particular to the Amish.
The real problem is simply that you need a certain gene pool size (and thus diversity) for long-term survival; the smaller the pool is, the more likely it is that you'll see genetic defects, and if it's small enough, those defects may ultimately prove fatal (for example, some biologists believe that cheetahs will die out in the (biological) short-term future due to this).
It's important to keep in mind that this is happening purely on a genetic level, though, and research into genetics, the diseases caused by this and how to treat (or at least relieve) them will not be able to change anything about that. If someone is suffering from a genetic disease, then helping them prevent an actual outbreak of that disease does not change their genes - so while you're helping the individual, you're not changing anything when it comes to the genetic side of things.
In other words, *IF* the Amish gene pool is too small or if there are two little interconnections between the different localised pools, then they will suffer the same fate that cheetahs may, and research into genetics and relieving of genetic diseases will not change anything about that. The only way to accomplish that would be to increase the gene pool size and ensure diversity, and that wouldn't be possible without changes to Amish culture, too.
But then, it's a pretty big IF. Who knows? People have lived this way in the past for a long time, and it worked for them, too (in the sense of not proving fatal), so it may well be the same for the Amish.
In either case, what remains is the fact that research into genetic diseases can still help individual people lead a "normal" life, which I'd say is a good thing - both for the Amish and for everyone else who also benefits from it.
That's not enforcable, and here's why. Of course, IANAL, so take it with a grain of salt, but this is what I believe things are like.
The basic point is that there is no such thing as an EULA or something similar that could be used to dicate terms like this (or any terms really) to the reader/user/customer/consumer.
The reason for that is that while, as far as I understand, the purchase of a piece of software is being interpreted as buying the right to use it, so to speak, not as buying anything tangible, a book is different: you actually buy the physical book, and there is no license agreement between you and the author or publisher: the only contract is between you and the seller of the book.
As such, I think that while a software company might be able to include a clause in the license that you (for example) have to pay them an annual fee depending on how you use the software might be able to persuade a court and win a hypothetical case (although it's not clear to me whether they would, as you as a customer probably can expect that when you buy a piece of software, you will be able to use it under reasonable terms); a book publisher, on the other hand, can only prevent you from doing things that copyright law as such does not give you an a priori permission to do, such as copying, distributing or broadcasting the work etc. They can *not* prevent you from actually using the work - in other words, you do not need a license from the publisher to *read* a book, for example, and I'd argue that in the case of RPG material, the same goes for using the rules to DM a campaign (LARP or not).
Unlike in the USA, minors *cannot* be tried as adults in Germany under any circumstances. In fact, the opposite is true: a young person can be tried as a minor instead of an adult if they're behind in their development, for example, even if they're over 18.
The tragedy of Einstein is that he convinced physicists that strange nonintuitive things are a part of the universe.
You mean like special/general relativity? Quantum mechanics? Heisenberg's uncertainty principle? Seriously, many things in physics *are* non-intuitive (or even counter-intuitive). That doesn't mean that every "off-the-wall sounding" theory is necessarily right, of course, but where does the idea come from that it should necessarily be wrong? The only thing a theory should be judged on is how well it explains the observed facts and how good it is for the purpose of making predictions (which can then be verified or falsified in turn).
Any sort of personal attachment to or opposition to a theory, based on *anything* except whether it's scientifically sound, is stupid, and that (stupidity) is just what you seem to be exhibiting here - you're not really any better than the cargo-culters who like cool-sounding terms like "dark matter" (or black holes, or quarks, or nifty pictures of fractals - the list is endless) without really understanding what these things are about.
I've got to agree with this. Reverse engineering an obfuscated binary may seem like a very daunting task at first, but it certainly can be done. Take a look at the Honeynet Project's Scan of the Month 33, for example; reading the answers is quite interesting, even for someone who (like me) otherwise has no practical knowledge regarding reverse engineering.:)
Slashdot Mirror
Oh, OK. :) Just curious.
There is something you *can* do, though, and that is to use an SSH tunnel to a server with a trusted key - for example, a server where you verified the keys' integrity in person. Then, when you're on the road, connect to the server with your laptop; if the key fingerprint you get doesn't match, assume someone's attempting a man-in-the-middle attack, and don't do anything. In particular, do not log in to the server, of course, in order to prevent leaking your credentials.
If the fingerprints *do* matched, log in to the server normally, then tunnel everything through the ssh connection, and your traffic should be unwatchable even when you're in a potentially hostile environment.
Of course, there are other precautions you may have to take if you want to be really secure overall, but as far as the pure traffic is concerned, this should be pretty foolproof.
The real problem with this is that once a secure connection with a trusted outside machine (for example, an SSH server) has been established, you cannot sniff it anymore. You *might* be able to conduct a man-in-the-middle attack if you start *before* the connection is established, but even then, you probably won't - the public key fingerprint you present to the hijacker (in the airplane) won't match the one in his key database, so unless he's stupid, he simply won't connect at all and the attack (or at least the coordination) won't happen.
Of course, that would be a success in itself (at least if the actual attack is stopped as opposed to the mere coordination of different attacks), but it requires something much stronger than a court warrant that allows you to target a specific suspect individual - you'd have to actively monitor (and route through your application-level gateway) *each and every* single packet that's being sent or received. For everyone in the plane. On every flight. Always.
Suddenly, things don't sound so good anymore, do they? You might still say that you'd rather be a live chump without a right to free speech [1] and so on than a dead one that still has the right, but not everyone'd prefer to live in a 1984-like world. Would you?
Of course, total surveillance of everyone 24 hours a day and 7 days a week, without any privacy at all, in a world where cryptography and private communication is outlawed, would probably make you safer from hijackings and the like, but is that the kind of world you'd want to live in?
Getting back to the original point, the problem with this is not so much that the FBI will or should be allowed to place a wiretap within ten minutes if they get a court warrant allowing them to. As far as I am concerned, they could start wiretapping one second after the OK - there's nothing wrong with that.
What *is* a problem is the fact that this is probably going to be sold as a security improvement, when in reality it is not. A false sense of security does not help anyone - just like blind and unjustified fear does not help, either.
So it's probably still a good idea to remain skeptical for now.
1. Note that the right to free speech includes not only the legal right, but also being able to actually use that right without fear of repression and/or repercussions.
I use both. :) Hey, are you a fan of Nemi, or is the name just coincidence? :)
Both Java and C++ are fundamentally object-oriented languages, so what, if I may ask, is wrong with forcing you to use OO design? The only reason I could come up with is that it's a violation of TIMTOWTDI, but it's not as if either Java or C++ are big on that, anyway.
:) There's plenty of other tools you can use instead.
I don't like C++ myself (it's a big, bloated, inflexible mess), but this seems rather silly. If your problems aren't nails (or if you don't want to treat them as such), then don't use a hammer as a tool, but don't complain about the fact that a hammer is, well, a hammer.
It's not FOSS, but as far as I'm aware of (which admittedly isn't that far), there is no big company behind SpyBot S&D, at least. It also offers an option to immunise IE by blocking known bad webpages, which I think is an important option even when you don't run IE as your default browser - there are many apps that embed it. Generally, the problem of unjustified whitelisting of spyware can be solved by running more than one tool. It's a crutch, of course, but it works; what one vendor was bribed to gloss over, another vendor will pick up.
You mean "printer on fire". And that one, funny as it may sound, actually was a valid and true error message, back in the dark ages - see this lkml post for an explanation. :)
Have you ever actually had or met a parrot? They're highly intelligent, and it seems entirely likely that when he gave nonsensical answer, he was simply bored.
You might think that I'm attributing too much personality to a parrot, but just wait until you had one...
That's the wrong question to ask. I'd argue that any piece of open-source software that is non-trivial, successful and serves a purpose that is of interest to companies *will* eventually attract funding, including developers paid for by companies, but that doesn't mean that open-source must have a commercial (paid) developer base to be successful. You have the direction reversed here: success leads to paid development, not vice versa.
The *real* question you'd have to ask is how many successful, non-trivial FOSS projects were *started* by people with a commercial interest (companies), and if you do that, things will certainly look differently. Tools like the GNU system, the Linux kernel itself, PHP, Perl and so on were all started without any commercial help - it was only later on, when they were already successful, that they attracted commercial help. JBoss may be different (or not - I don't know its history), but if I had to make an educated guess, I'd say that the amount of FOSS started by companies is by far the minority.
And of course, that's only looking at FOSS that is of interest to companies, anyway, which gives a skewed picture, since there are several important projects and high-profile projects (not to mention countless smaller ones) that cater to a different target group - namely, end users themselves, who arguably are both more important and more abundant than companies.
You don't have to test every piece of software that uses a dynamic library. Proper unit tests for the library itself will be enough, as long as they're comprehensive and cover the entire API; the only apps that might still break are those that use the library in ways it's not intended to be, but that's really the app developers' own fault then.
Maybe it's just me, but I don't understand what the *National* Arbitration Forum (emphasis mine) has to do with a dispute between Google, which is from the US, and a guy in Russia. Can someone explain that to me?
While I certainly am in favour of the ruling itself, I don't see how a US-american organization could assert authority over handling conflicts that aren't happening in the USA. Did Russia agree to this? What are the rules for arbitrating such matters between people (or entities) from different states, anyway? I imagine that it's regulated on a WTO level or so, but I still find the whole thing rather strange.
If the National Arbitration Forum of Russia (assuming that such a thing exists) decided in favour of a Russian company who sought arbitration against a US citizen, you probably wouldn't feel comfortable with it, either, even if the decision itself was obviously correct.
I haven't checked, but I wouldn't be surprised at all if there was one on ThePirateBay.
If the answer is no, why should I take advice from a guy named "Lord Dweomer"? :)
No flamebait intended, but it doesn't make sense to rag someone for having a funny nickname and posting on Slashdot when you're having a funny nickname and are posting on Slashdot, too. And why should Slashdot readers "NEVER" give legal advice? There certainly are actual lawyers posting here, for example - admittedly, they're (usually) not *your* lawyers, but they still can offer an informed opinion, and the same goes for other people, too, even though the opinion just may be less informed if they don't actually have a legal background.
That being said, the advice to file it away instead of putting it into the garbage is certainly good.
Maybe I'm just playing devil's advocate now, but to me, that sounds a lot like communism. Not in the sense that the Amish society actually could be compared to communism, that is; but your description is akin to descriptions of communism in that it sounds good on paper, but leads to real problems when actually implemented that are conveniently ignored when a more theoretical description is given.
Take, for example, the young man mentioned in a comment above who bought a laptop, and whose bishop took him and the laptop back to the store a few days later to give it back and ask for a refund. Yes, there certainly is a *reason* for this - the bishop didn't just do it because he didn't like the young man and wanted to make him suffer. But still, that's what happened, essentially; the man *wanted* a laptop, but couldn't get one "legally", and when he simply bought one anyway, he lost it again.
I'm sure he wasn't too happy with that, himself. Of course, I do assume here that as an adult, he is able to determine what he really wants (no matter when it's about a laptop or community life or whatever) - one might argue that he simply didn't know or didn't think about the "greater good" of society as a whole, but I think it's necessary to accept that he was aware of what he was doing and its consequences and still reached a decision.
Where does that all put us? Certainly, society as a whole dictating certain behaviour for individuals is not all that uncommon: it's the basic idea behind democracy, after all, that the majority can make decisions, even when not *every* single individual might like them. But there's more to democracy, too - it's also about personal freedom as well as non-interference. The latter concept in particular seems to be violated here: if I do something that doesn't hurt you, then you shouldn't be able to tell me that I can't do it. I derive the basic right to do it from the fact that I have personal freedom; and from the concept of non-interference, I can conclude that if I don't interfere with *your* personal freedom, then it really is OK.
Of course, that is in stark contrast to Amish society, which - as pointed out in the Wired article, for example - does not value individuality and individuals as much as conformity and society as a whole.
And that's OK, too, to a certain extent - if that's what someone wants, that's certainly fine. But it is important to note that in this sense, the Amish can be compared to any other sect (like the Hare Krishna, for example). And like with any other sect, while you may not find someone who will openly *tell* you that they don't like it, there will be people like that - and the mechanics that keep these people in the cults essentially against their will are well-understood. In the case of the Amish, sending people to the outside world without information on the social structures, without friends and so on just serve to reinforce the belief that the "English" world is not for them - and that's essentially a powerful deterrent to keep people from leaving the community or even speaking up against it. If you honestly believe that it's all you have, then are you going to destroy it? Certainly not.
And that's really the gist of the matter. It's all about *choice*: if someone genuinely chooses to live the Amish way, then that's fine, but people also must be given a fair chance to say that they don't want to do so. And contrary to what is claimed by the Amish (and maybe even believed), they don't do that.
Natural selection? There hasn't been any of that in human societies in thousands of years - that particular problem certainly is not particular to the Amish.
The real problem is simply that you need a certain gene pool size (and thus diversity) for long-term survival; the smaller the pool is, the more likely it is that you'll see genetic defects, and if it's small enough, those defects may ultimately prove fatal (for example, some biologists believe that cheetahs will die out in the (biological) short-term future due to this).
It's important to keep in mind that this is happening purely on a genetic level, though, and research into genetics, the diseases caused by this and how to treat (or at least relieve) them will not be able to change anything about that. If someone is suffering from a genetic disease, then helping them prevent an actual outbreak of that disease does not change their genes - so while you're helping the individual, you're not changing anything when it comes to the genetic side of things.
In other words, *IF* the Amish gene pool is too small or if there are two little interconnections between the different localised pools, then they will suffer the same fate that cheetahs may, and research into genetics and relieving of genetic diseases will not change anything about that. The only way to accomplish that would be to increase the gene pool size and ensure diversity, and that wouldn't be possible without changes to Amish culture, too.
But then, it's a pretty big IF. Who knows? People have lived this way in the past for a long time, and it worked for them, too (in the sense of not proving fatal), so it may well be the same for the Amish.
In either case, what remains is the fact that research into genetic diseases can still help individual people lead a "normal" life, which I'd say is a good thing - both for the Amish and for everyone else who also benefits from it.
That's not enforcable, and here's why. Of course, IANAL, so take it with a grain of salt, but this is what I believe things are like. The basic point is that there is no such thing as an EULA or something similar that could be used to dicate terms like this (or any terms really) to the reader/user/customer/consumer. The reason for that is that while, as far as I understand, the purchase of a piece of software is being interpreted as buying the right to use it, so to speak, not as buying anything tangible, a book is different: you actually buy the physical book, and there is no license agreement between you and the author or publisher: the only contract is between you and the seller of the book. As such, I think that while a software company might be able to include a clause in the license that you (for example) have to pay them an annual fee depending on how you use the software might be able to persuade a court and win a hypothetical case (although it's not clear to me whether they would, as you as a customer probably can expect that when you buy a piece of software, you will be able to use it under reasonable terms); a book publisher, on the other hand, can only prevent you from doing things that copyright law as such does not give you an a priori permission to do, such as copying, distributing or broadcasting the work etc. They can *not* prevent you from actually using the work - in other words, you do not need a license from the publisher to *read* a book, for example, and I'd argue that in the case of RPG material, the same goes for using the rules to DM a campaign (LARP or not).
It's listed on londonslang.com, though. H2G2 also mentions it, as does urbandictionary.com. I'm not from London, but it sure seems to be real.
Unlike in the USA, minors *cannot* be tried as adults in Germany under any circumstances. In fact, the opposite is true: a young person can be tried as a minor instead of an adult if they're behind in their development, for example, even if they're over 18.
And that's the way it should be.
It's all on mirrordot.
Not just that, the new standard also seems to allow you to write "i MAX_COUNT" without having to include a comparison operator! :)
What, that hasn't happened yet? :)
Normal users may not care, but normal users who don't care, get infected big time and *still* refuse to use better alternatives deserve it. :)
You mean like special/general relativity? Quantum mechanics? Heisenberg's uncertainty principle? Seriously, many things in physics *are* non-intuitive (or even counter-intuitive). That doesn't mean that every "off-the-wall sounding" theory is necessarily right, of course, but where does the idea come from that it should necessarily be wrong? The only thing a theory should be judged on is how well it explains the observed facts and how good it is for the purpose of making predictions (which can then be verified or falsified in turn).
Any sort of personal attachment to or opposition to a theory, based on *anything* except whether it's scientifically sound, is stupid, and that (stupidity) is just what you seem to be exhibiting here - you're not really any better than the cargo-culters who like cool-sounding terms like "dark matter" (or black holes, or quarks, or nifty pictures of fractals - the list is endless) without really understanding what these things are about.
The idea was that if you needed to insert a line or two at some place in your program, you'd be able to do so without renumbering all lines.
I've got to agree with this. Reverse engineering an obfuscated binary may seem like a very daunting task at first, but it certainly can be done. Take a look at the Honeynet Project's Scan of the Month 33, for example; reading the answers is quite interesting, even for someone who (like me) otherwise has no practical knowledge regarding reverse engineering. :)