We'll . . . yes, but I recommend Simon Singh's Codebook as a much better intro. Cryptonomicon was a bit of a tedious read actually.
Re:no encryption that YOU didn't write is safe
on
Is Hushmail Still Safe?
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Governments don't have any magical ability to find flaws in encryption that ordinary academics don't
But they do have lots of academics, and often some of the very best. Case in point: the NSA discovered differential cryptanalysis years before anyone else (that we know of) and was aware that several commercially important algorithms were susceptible.
If you want encryption guaranteed against major governments you have to go with a one time pad. Even then you've got to worry about Van Eck Phreaking or FPGA eavesdropping.
In general it's a bad idea to be confident in your encryption - if the Germans hadn't been so confident in Engima they might have done much better militarily.
Any provider like this can ultimately be compelled to cooperate with security services and you've therefore got to assume they are working with major governments to compromise your communications. Common sense really.
That said, something like Mixmaster is a good place to start. Makes it very difficult to be located by any legal process although (of course) it won't help if the NSA takes an interest.
Hushmail? Compromised almost as soon as it was set up I'd wager.
would that still be free speech and perfectly OK by you?
Yes, the problem is the boss listening to stupid allegations and not checking to see whether they're true or not. I should (and probably would) be able to sue him for sacking me - I shouldn't (but probably would) be able to also sue the person who made the accusations.
If I was caught removing your property from your house and could convince a jury (or magistrate, etc) that I was intending to return it then I couldn't be convicted for theft. Whether that defence is plausible enough to stand any reasonable chance of success I very much doubt.
On the other hand, a large corporation with a well publicised policy of taking property into temporary storage and an established history of returning said property afterwards is another matter.
And isn't that called "theft? God I wish people would actually look up the definition of theft so that I didn't constantly see misunderstandings like this. "with intent to permanently deprive the owner of possession" No intent to permanently deprive = not theft Maybe criminal in other ways of course.
the vast majority of files on The Pirate Bay are illegal and violate copyright laws in many or most countries
Bittorrent files contain only information about other files available from other sources. A bittorrent file contains NO copyrighted data and the copyright laws of "many or most countries" do not apply to them.
If you sell pirated and legal CDs out of the trunk of your car - you are still guilty of selling illegal copies.
And if I tell you where a local garage sale is being held is that illegal too?
Germany still seems to have a lot of it's old attitudes lying around.
Yeah, because other governments would never do something like this - talk about naive. Did anybody here not realise that skype calls were going to be intercepted?
I think it's a mistake to think this is just a simple pattern. DaVinci knew a lot about what's pleasing to the eye in terms of proportion, color tone, etc. Lot's of things in nature are based on fractals or the golden ratio (amongst other things) and for some reason we find these patterns pleasant. The human body itself has a fractal pattern to some extent so the last supper must be full of this stuff. If when you take these patterns from a visual medium and convert them to an auditory medium people find them harmonious that's not especially surprising. Why people find these sorts of patterns attractive is however a very interesting question.
Duel CPU : you closest group of friends : form a Slashdot effect : actualy : havent : delt : Adition : non Zealously : preconsived : actaully : useing : simular : desinged : then I have
You know, I don't like to judge people by the odd spelling mistake or bit of dodgy grammar. We all make mistakes and it's not like spelling is generally all that important in making your writing understandable. However the number of spelling mistakes in your post (I won't even start on the grammar) makes you sound like an idiot. If you have dyslexia or English isn't your mother tongue, use a spell checker, if you're just stupid then don't post.
The EU patent office already issues EU software patents - they're just unenforceable because they aren't supposed to and such patents aren't legal. The EU patent office isn't just pushing for software patents so they can issue them, they also want to legitimise the patents they've already issued.
The issue of EU software patents hasn't gone away, it's been put on a back burner while the corporate interests try to build up (buy) more support.
Yeah, mod me flamebait if you like. I've got karma to burn just at the moment and if even one person starts asking serious questions because of that post - that's real karma not the slashdot version.
The whole world will be destroyed through cataclysmic global warming, is certainly an extraordinary claim - so have the IPCC produced extraordinary proof . . . or even ordinary proof.
Their evidence for ANY global warming is very thin: they ignore antarctic temperature records which disagree with their theory. The temperature records they do accept fail to account for the urban heat island effect and they apparently feel they can dismiss the most exhaustive and accurate measurements available (NASA satellite temp readings) with a wave of the hand and a vague accusation of partiality.
If they can't even produce any substantial proof that the worlds temperature has risen do you think they can they produce proof that this is caused by CO2 or that increased CO2 is the result of human interference - don't make me laugh.
Anthropogenic global warming MAY be happening, just as there MAY be intelligent life on some other planet . . . who the f**k knows? There's no evidence for either.
And no I don't have better information of more experience than the IPCC scientists, but neither do I feel the need to abandon my critical faculties in the face of some "authority" with impressive credentials.
You've been lucky and worked in a relatively relaxed IT environment.
If I wanted to install new software on my work computer, I'd have to have the software approved by the IT department who would check for possible security flaws, system requirements, maintenance requirements, etc. Unless it was open source, I'd also have to submit a request to our purchasing department stating the type of licence, why I required the software, etc.
We needed a particular piece of modelling software in our department (for about ten employees) and it took two months before it was finally installed.
If I managed to break the protection on a work computer so that I even *could* "just install" another program, I'd be sacked for that in itself (if anybody found out). Actually installing unauthorised software would be prima facie grounds for dismissal.
These sorts of policies are commonplace in government and the defence industry.
It'd be like finding a needle in a haystack - if you had a huge electromagnet handy. The reason dodgy code is dodgy is because of the things it does so you can pick it up automatically from that, and programs like strace and ethereal are going to point an arrow straight at offending code. To truly hide the code it would have to be inactive and thus cease to be dodgy.
Slashdot Mirror
We'll . . . yes, but I recommend Simon Singh's Codebook as a much better intro. Cryptonomicon was a bit of a tedious read actually.
Governments don't have any magical ability to find flaws in encryption that ordinary academics don't
But they do have lots of academics, and often some of the very best. Case in point: the NSA discovered differential cryptanalysis years before anyone else (that we know of) and was aware that several commercially important algorithms were susceptible.
Learn something about elementary encryption before shooting your mouth off.
If you want encryption guaranteed against major governments you have to go with a one time pad. Even then you've got to worry about Van Eck Phreaking or FPGA eavesdropping.
In general it's a bad idea to be confident in your encryption - if the Germans hadn't been so confident in Engima they might have done much better militarily.
Any provider like this can ultimately be compelled to cooperate with security services and you've therefore got to assume they are working with major governments to compromise your communications. Common sense really.
That said, something like Mixmaster is a good place to start. Makes it very difficult to be located by any legal process although (of course) it won't help if the NSA takes an interest.
Hushmail? Compromised almost as soon as it was set up I'd wager.
Yes, the problem is the boss listening to stupid allegations and not checking to see whether they're true or not. I should (and probably would) be able to sue him for sacking me - I shouldn't (but probably would) be able to also sue the person who made the accusations.
But lawyers are another matter? Too right.
If I was caught removing your property from your house and could convince a jury (or magistrate, etc) that I was intending to return it then I couldn't be convicted for theft. Whether that defence is plausible enough to stand any reasonable chance of success I very much doubt.
On the other hand, a large corporation with a well publicised policy of taking property into temporary storage and an established history of returning said property afterwards is another matter.
And isn't that called "theft?
God I wish people would actually look up the definition of theft so that I didn't constantly see misunderstandings like this.
"with intent to permanently deprive the owner of possession"
No intent to permanently deprive = not theft
Maybe criminal in other ways of course.
Well you could paint it.
Yeah, you're wasting your time trying to explain a space elevator to someone who's this ignorant.
Which raises the interesting question of how flammable this stuff is (or maybe it's inflammmable).
Oh no . . . if we start using carbon we'll end up with global cooling, the sky is falling, the sky is falling!
The guy murdered his wife
You don't know that, in fact as the OP pointed out there appears to be no evidence at all that he did.
the vast majority of files on The Pirate Bay are illegal and violate copyright laws in many or most countries
Bittorrent files contain only information about other files available from other sources. A bittorrent file contains NO copyrighted data and the copyright laws of "many or most countries" do not apply to them.
If you sell pirated and legal CDs out of the trunk of your car - you are still guilty of selling illegal copies.
And if I tell you where a local garage sale is being held is that illegal too?
Germany still seems to have a lot of it's old attitudes lying around.
Yeah, because other governments would never do something like this - talk about naive. Did anybody here not realise that skype calls were going to be intercepted?
You're right the closed source model produces much better vapourware.
I think it's a mistake to think this is just a simple pattern. DaVinci knew a lot about what's pleasing to the eye in terms of proportion, color tone, etc. Lot's of things in nature are based on fractals or the golden ratio (amongst other things) and for some reason we find these patterns pleasant. The human body itself has a fractal pattern to some extent so the last supper must be full of this stuff. If when you take these patterns from a visual medium and convert them to an auditory medium people find them harmonious that's not especially surprising. Why people find these sorts of patterns attractive is however a very interesting question.
Duel CPU : you closest group of friends : form a Slashdot effect : actualy : havent : delt : Adition : non Zealously : preconsived : actaully : useing : simular : desinged : then I have
You know, I don't like to judge people by the odd spelling mistake or bit of dodgy grammar. We all make mistakes and it's not like spelling is generally all that important in making your writing understandable. However the number of spelling mistakes in your post (I won't even start on the grammar) makes you sound like an idiot. If you have dyslexia or English isn't your mother tongue, use a spell checker, if you're just stupid then don't post.
Most famous one is the "Morning Glory" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morning_glory_cloud) in Australia.
No one is saying that the world is going to "end"
Really? .
http://www.iema.net/news/envnews?aid=4056
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn443.html
And so on . .
The EU patent office already issues EU software patents - they're just unenforceable because they aren't supposed to and such patents aren't legal. The EU patent office isn't just pushing for software patents so they can issue them, they also want to legitimise the patents they've already issued.
The issue of EU software patents hasn't gone away, it's been put on a back burner while the corporate interests try to build up (buy) more support.
Yeah, mod me flamebait if you like. I've got karma to burn just at the moment and if even one person starts asking serious questions because of that post - that's real karma not the slashdot version.
"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof"
The whole world will be destroyed through cataclysmic global warming, is certainly an extraordinary claim - so have the IPCC produced extraordinary proof . . . or even ordinary proof.
Their evidence for ANY global warming is very thin: they ignore antarctic temperature records which disagree with their theory. The temperature records they do accept fail to account for the urban heat island effect and they apparently feel they can dismiss the most exhaustive and accurate measurements available (NASA satellite temp readings) with a wave of the hand and a vague accusation of partiality.
If they can't even produce any substantial proof that the worlds temperature has risen do you think they can they produce proof that this is caused by CO2 or that increased CO2 is the result of human interference - don't make me laugh.
Anthropogenic global warming MAY be happening, just as there MAY be intelligent life on some other planet . . . who the f**k knows? There's no evidence for either.
And no I don't have better information of more experience than the IPCC scientists, but neither do I feel the need to abandon my critical faculties in the face of some "authority" with impressive credentials.
You've been lucky and worked in a relatively relaxed IT environment.
If I wanted to install new software on my work computer, I'd have to have the software approved by the IT department who would check for possible security flaws, system requirements, maintenance requirements, etc. Unless it was open source, I'd also have to submit a request to our purchasing department stating the type of licence, why I required the software, etc.
We needed a particular piece of modelling software in our department (for about ten employees) and it took two months before it was finally installed.
If I managed to break the protection on a work computer so that I even *could* "just install" another program, I'd be sacked for that in itself (if anybody found out). Actually installing unauthorised software would be prima facie grounds for dismissal.
These sorts of policies are commonplace in government and the defence industry.
It'd be like finding a needle in a haystack - if you had a huge electromagnet handy. The reason dodgy code is dodgy is because of the things it does so you can pick it up automatically from that, and programs like strace and ethereal are going to point an arrow straight at offending code. To truly hide the code it would have to be inactive and thus cease to be dodgy.