And even he doesn't cover all the problems; for example, as everyone with the slightest clue about spam has known for years, responding to the spammer in any way is absolutely idiotic.
Really, mr. expert?
I guess when I caused an SMS spammer to stop by spamming their phone back from ICQ accounts, I just dreamed it up, then.
"Slightest clue", "has known for years"... bleh. You go get a clue.
Suggesting that they don't understand free software is a bizarre POV.
Little news tidbits like these ones actually explain why there's been a
steady trickle of those bizarre, off the wall, statements and comments, from
Ballmer, Gates, and other senior Microsoft officers. You know -- the
comments like open source being some demonic spawn of Vladimir Il'ich Lenin;
or Richard Stallman invading your corporate vaults and stealing your company
secrets, etc... etc... etc...
I do believe that Open Source software, and Linux specifically, are taking a
bigger, and bigger chunk out of Microsoft's revenues. Not much, in fact it's
rather piddly; but it's still noticeable. And it's growing. Although few
people on/. can actually put a monetary amount on how much it actually is,
if there's anybody in the world who has a pretty good idea how much revenue
Microsoft is losing because of Linux, it must be Gates, Ballmer, and the
rest of Microsoft's upper echelon.
And I think they're getting scared.
That may be a bit self-serving or presumptious, and with 40 billion in the
bank they clearly don't have much to worry about. Still, I think they have
to have at least a mild case of indigestion.
There's nothing in this story that really should surprise anyway. So the
feds, and the spooks, are using Linux, sometimes in a quite visible, and
mission-critical way. So? That's nothing earth-shattering. And that's
precisely what's giving Ballmer and Co the problem. Linux has traction. Not
just the feds. Linux has traction in big corporate America. SIAC - the folks
who run the networks for the stock exchanges, have cut over some
mission-critical functionality over to Linux. Look at the classifieds ads in
New York City, from big financial firms. There's a small trickle of open job
reqs for hackers with Linux experience.
Gates, Ballmer, and Co, are seeing this as well as the next guy, and they
just don't know what to do about it. That's what's scaring them. It's one
thing when you have a well-defined opponent to do battle with. But how do
you define the opponent here? Microsoft can't clearly define who their
opponent here is. There's no single company to purchase, spread FUD about,
or drag into court over some frivolous intellectual issue, in order to bleed
them with legal fees.
So, all you can do is to try to FUD your way against Linux in general. But
each time you'll try to go with a generic FUD campaign, your arguments can
be easily shut down with a single, specific, counterexample of Linux's
success in a mission-critical role. There's enough case history out there
now to be able to point to, as a counterargument to FUD.
Microsoft is clearly struggling, trying to figure out a focused, targeted,
anti-Linux campaign, and failing each time. Notice how they no longer claim
that Linux isn't ready for mission-critical roles. That didn't work. Now
they're claiming that using Linux puts your intellectual property in
jeopardy. That can't last much longer. They still can't come up with a
specific example, and only talk about in generalities; furthermore with Sun
and HP putting Linux APIs into their respectives *nixes, the notion that Sun
and HP have intentionally put their intellectual property in jeopardy is a
bit difficult to swallow.
So, I don't think the intellectual property FUD has much more left in it,
and it will slowly disappear over time. So, what's the next FUD attack? I
don't know. Neither does Ballmer, or Gates. And that's what's scaring them.
In the US the security times are clearly amateurs.
I agree completely, all the security guards I saw in US went by the instructions, but they clearly didn't know what are they doing, and weren't prepared to handle any sort of emergency.
The guards and the security procedures were completely useless.
For instance, imagine the TSA actually catches a suicide bomber strapped with explosives. Well, he or she can take out hundreds of people in those parallel security lines, from a combination of different flights...
Thus, all the screening they have added is NOT for protecting people, but for protecting PLANES. Planes are expensive.
Yeah right, and taking out 300 passengers on a plane is no different from killing up to 20 and wounding up to 50 when exploding in a crowd.
But of course, you are right, all this security thing is a conspiracy by air flight companies.
If you don't want suicide bombers, you have to prevent people from WANTING to do it in the first place. Trying to catch them in the act is going after the symptom, not the root problem.
The root problem is not people wanting to do this, genius, it's dictator regimes and dictator wannabees. Suicide bombers don't just pop up wanting to explode, they are recruited and brainwashed.
Airplanes are more secure now for one reason only. The passengers now know to fight back.
Sure, Mr. Online Expert, the anti-missile equipment on the Israeli plane that was almost shot down over Kenya had nothing to do with the passengers safety.
We aren't going to see another hijacking for that reason alone.
How old are you, expert?
And it is trivial to leave an unattended package in a crowded line, and an incident at a major airport will shut it down and snarl traffic across the country just as well as if it were on a plane.
Try to do it in Israel, you might be surprised. My bet is you won't advance past the first check point upon the entry to the airport.
It is impossible to stop 100% of determined attacks. The best defense is to avoid having enemies that hate you to that extent in the first place.
I wonder where do you get these amazing insights from. Not from history, that's for sure.
I find it a blessing that my compiler finds out the best way to inline certain functions for me, that i can just define a function as 'const' when it is const to provide the compiler with information to optimize with, etc etc...
Can you please provide an example where the compiler would take an advantage of const member functions, including compiler version and difference in assembly output, please?
Now, if I were looking for a job, and the recruiter/employer insisted on having a Word document, I generally would regard him as quite narrow-minded and incompetent, and probably not worth the best of my time.
That's plain stupid, a secretary usually prints out the resume - so what, if she can't handle PDF, you'll refuse to send a.doc?
To how many people there are in the US. It's ironic, but we've managed to create a system of state-run concentration camps without actually calling them that. We decry racism, but not enough to think that rounding up the browner peoples in the country and sticking them into forced labor camps is a bad idea.
How is the number of people in the US relevant? What matters is the percentage of criminals who are black. I would expect the percentage of executed persons who are black to be roughly the same.
Re:Nothing more sad than MENSA
on
MSN Sponsors Mensa
·
· Score: 0, Redundant
Yes, losers like Scott Adams, Isaac Asimov and (my favourite) pr0n star Asia Carrera. Like always on Slashdot, you got modded up for not knowing anything at all about the subject under discussion...
Asimov joined
Mensa, the high-IQ society, in the early 1960s, but found that many of the members were arrogant about their supposed intelligence, so he let his membership lapse. However when he moved back to New York, he became an active member once again, and gave speeches to groups of Mensans on a number of occasions. Yet once again membership became a burden for him, so he resigned from the group.
The derivation of the S-Boxes are a secret. Changing the numbers in the S-Boxes certainly weaken DES, but it is not published as to _why_ the ones the NSA picked are so strong and how they were derived.
Did you actually study cryptography, or are just quoting some book about spies? There is nothing mysterious about S-Boxes in DES, they are resistant to differential cryptanalysis (with 4th S-Box being still rather weak, IIRC), but that's about it.
Before anyone points out that now we'll find out the truth about the infamous NSAKEY in Windows or some dirty little secrets of Bush administration, I would like to remind you that according to Bruce Schneier "algorithms from the NSA are considered a sort of alien technology: They come from a superior race with no explanations."
Isn't that quote from the days when cryptography research was still behind the classified organizations?
The most important implication of declassifying NSA would be a better understanding of the mysterious rationale of many of NSA decisions in crypto algorithms, because even many aspects of DES remain a mystery to this day.
What?! Which aspects would these be?
So please stop the explosion of crackpot conspiracy theories and focus on the most important issue: cryptoanallysis.
That would be "cryptanalysis." Also, that statement doesn't make any sense.
World media used "militants" and "guerilla fighters" terms instead of "terrorists" for a long time, in order to underestimate the crimes these people do.
Haha, no shit - when I saw the "Marat Fayzullin" name, I thought - perhaps that's the only Marat I knew on IRC, the RST38h wacko in EFNet #russian? No way, I said...
Tough shit, will log to IRC tonight for a good laugh.
RSA was never broken in the same way that SHA-1 is now
That's bullshit, 1024-bit keys were supposed to be safe for the foreseeable future ("military strength"), but increasingly better factorization algorithms have been devised over time.
Re:Only if you don't do backups.
on
EFF's Logfinder
·
· Score: 1
Slashdot Mirror
And even he doesn't cover all the problems; for example, as everyone with the slightest clue about spam has known for years, responding to the spammer in any way is absolutely idiotic.
Really, mr. expert?
I guess when I caused an SMS spammer to stop by spamming their phone back from ICQ accounts, I just dreamed it up, then.
"Slightest clue", "has known for years"... bleh. You go get a clue.
Suggesting that they don't understand free software is a bizarre POV.
Little news tidbits like these ones actually explain why there's been a steady trickle of those bizarre, off the wall, statements and comments, from Ballmer, Gates, and other senior Microsoft officers. You know -- the comments like open source being some demonic spawn of Vladimir Il'ich Lenin; or Richard Stallman invading your corporate vaults and stealing your company secrets, etc... etc... etc...
I do believe that Open Source software, and Linux specifically, are taking a bigger, and bigger chunk out of Microsoft's revenues. Not much, in fact it's rather piddly; but it's still noticeable. And it's growing. Although few people on /. can actually put a monetary amount on how much it actually is,
if there's anybody in the world who has a pretty good idea how much revenue
Microsoft is losing because of Linux, it must be Gates, Ballmer, and the
rest of Microsoft's upper echelon.
And I think they're getting scared.
That may be a bit self-serving or presumptious, and with 40 billion in the bank they clearly don't have much to worry about. Still, I think they have to have at least a mild case of indigestion.
There's nothing in this story that really should surprise anyway. So the feds, and the spooks, are using Linux, sometimes in a quite visible, and mission-critical way. So? That's nothing earth-shattering. And that's precisely what's giving Ballmer and Co the problem. Linux has traction. Not just the feds. Linux has traction in big corporate America. SIAC - the folks who run the networks for the stock exchanges, have cut over some mission-critical functionality over to Linux. Look at the classifieds ads in New York City, from big financial firms. There's a small trickle of open job reqs for hackers with Linux experience.
Gates, Ballmer, and Co, are seeing this as well as the next guy, and they just don't know what to do about it. That's what's scaring them. It's one thing when you have a well-defined opponent to do battle with. But how do you define the opponent here? Microsoft can't clearly define who their opponent here is. There's no single company to purchase, spread FUD about, or drag into court over some frivolous intellectual issue, in order to bleed them with legal fees.
So, all you can do is to try to FUD your way against Linux in general. But each time you'll try to go with a generic FUD campaign, your arguments can be easily shut down with a single, specific, counterexample of Linux's success in a mission-critical role. There's enough case history out there now to be able to point to, as a counterargument to FUD.
Microsoft is clearly struggling, trying to figure out a focused, targeted, anti-Linux campaign, and failing each time. Notice how they no longer claim that Linux isn't ready for mission-critical roles. That didn't work. Now they're claiming that using Linux puts your intellectual property in jeopardy. That can't last much longer. They still can't come up with a specific example, and only talk about in generalities; furthermore with Sun and HP putting Linux APIs into their respectives *nixes, the notion that Sun and HP have intentionally put their intellectual property in jeopardy is a bit difficult to swallow.
So, I don't think the intellectual property FUD has much more left in it, and it will slowly disappear over time. So, what's the next FUD attack? I don't know. Neither does Ballmer, or Gates. And that's what's scaring them.
So? This doesn't prove squat.
The copyrights are due to API emulations.
Microsoft's been using BSD code in Windows for years
No, it didn't.
In the US the security times are clearly amateurs.
I agree completely, all the security guards I saw in US went by the instructions, but they clearly didn't know what are they doing, and weren't prepared to handle any sort of emergency.
The guards and the security procedures were completely useless.
For instance, imagine the TSA actually catches a suicide bomber strapped with explosives. Well, he or she can take out hundreds of people in those parallel security lines, from a combination of different flights...
Thus, all the screening they have added is NOT for protecting people, but for protecting PLANES. Planes are expensive.
Yeah right, and taking out 300 passengers on a plane is no different from killing up to 20 and wounding up to 50 when exploding in a crowd.
But of course, you are right, all this security thing is a conspiracy by air flight companies.
If you don't want suicide bombers, you have to prevent people from WANTING to do it in the first place. Trying to catch them in the act is going after the symptom, not the root problem.
The root problem is not people wanting to do this, genius, it's dictator regimes and dictator wannabees. Suicide bombers don't just pop up wanting to explode, they are recruited and brainwashed.
Airplanes are more secure now for one reason only. The passengers now know to fight back.
Sure, Mr. Online Expert, the anti-missile equipment on the Israeli plane that was almost shot down over Kenya had nothing to do with the passengers safety.
We aren't going to see another hijacking for that reason alone.
How old are you, expert?
And it is trivial to leave an unattended package in a crowded line, and an incident at a major airport will shut it down and snarl traffic across the country just as well as if it were on a plane.
Try to do it in Israel, you might be surprised. My bet is you won't advance past the first check point upon the entry to the airport.
It is impossible to stop 100% of determined attacks. The best defense is to avoid having enemies that hate you to that extent in the first place.
I wonder where do you get these amazing insights from. Not from history, that's for sure.
When the rifle fires, the bullet will go up and then come down and hit some poor sap.
I always wondered where did this notion of bullet fired up, coming back and killing someone come from.
You realize that falling bullet will come to constant speed relatively fast due to air resistance, right? Right?
I find it a blessing that my compiler finds out the best way to inline certain functions for me, that i can just define a function as 'const' when it is const to provide the compiler with information to optimize with, etc etc...
Can you please provide an example where the compiler would take an advantage of const member functions, including compiler version and difference in assembly output, please?
Now, if I were looking for a job, and the recruiter/employer insisted on having a Word document, I generally would regard him as quite narrow-minded and incompetent, and probably not worth the best of my time.
That's plain stupid, a secretary usually prints out the resume - so what, if she can't handle PDF, you'll refuse to send a .doc?
Good for the other applicants, I guess.
To how many people there are in the US. It's ironic, but we've managed to create a system of state-run concentration camps without actually calling them that. We decry racism, but not enough to think that rounding up the browner peoples in the country and sticking them into forced labor camps is a bad idea.
How is the number of people in the US relevant? What matters is the percentage of criminals who are black. I would expect the percentage of executed persons who are black to be roughly the same.
People executed in the US are disproportinately black.
Disproportionally to what?
Arab-Americans are more likely to be stopped at airports.
I would say that's justified prejudice.
Who's the idiot who modded my post redundant?
Yes, losers like Scott Adams, Isaac Asimov and (my favourite) pr0n star Asia Carrera. Like always on Slashdot, you got modded up for not knowing anything at all about the subject under discussion...
From Isaac Asimov FAQ:
The derivation of the S-Boxes are a secret. Changing the numbers in the S-Boxes certainly weaken DES, but it is not published as to _why_ the ones the NSA picked are so strong and how they were derived.
Did you actually study cryptography, or are just quoting some book about spies? There is nothing mysterious about S-Boxes in DES, they are resistant to differential cryptanalysis (with 4th S-Box being still rather weak, IIRC), but that's about it.
Before anyone points out that now we'll find out the truth about the infamous NSAKEY in Windows or some dirty little secrets of Bush administration, I would like to remind you that according to Bruce Schneier "algorithms from the NSA are considered a sort of alien technology: They come from a superior race with no explanations."
Isn't that quote from the days when cryptography research was still behind the classified organizations?
The most important implication of declassifying NSA would be a better understanding of the mysterious rationale of many of NSA decisions in crypto algorithms, because even many aspects of DES remain a mystery to this day.
What?! Which aspects would these be?
So please stop the explosion of crackpot conspiracy theories and focus on the most important issue: cryptoanallysis.
That would be "cryptanalysis." Also, that statement doesn't make any sense.
Doh, it would not get them in conflict with arab states which support terror? (i.e., most of them)
You are not over twenty, am I right?
World media used "militants" and "guerilla fighters" terms instead of "terrorists" for a long time, in order to underestimate the crimes these people do.
ROFL :))
Haha, no shit - when I saw the "Marat Fayzullin" name, I thought - perhaps that's the only Marat I knew on IRC, the RST38h wacko in EFNet #russian? No way, I said...
Tough shit, will log to IRC tonight for a good laugh.
RSA was never broken in the same way that SHA-1 is now
That's bullshit, 1024-bit keys were supposed to be safe for the foreseeable future ("military strength"), but increasingly better factorization algorithms have been devised over time.
What's with database backups, genius?
In case you aren't joking... How is this relevant?
Dude, if you are going to use a topographic map from some online source for hiking, you are plain crazy.
They are when you use
member functions.Ah yes. The good old PRC.
It was still used in IDF when I left it, in 1997.
Probably still used in bootcamps.