So how does this tie in with all the other security developments going on like the NSA stuff, for example?
I'm not aware of exactly what NSA stuff you are speaking of. One thing to keep in mind is that OpenBSD is based out of Canada, not the USA. And to my knowledge there is no laws involving the exportation of crytography. Enabling OpenBSD to utilize this in the fixing of security issues. Comming from the project are other such gems as OpenSSH, which we all love and use, right?
So, unfortunatly with a generic question you get a generic answer of stuff that can be found on a half dozen links on their front page.
What?!? No blowfish logo? Not that the little devil doesn't work or anything, but I'm used to seeing the blowfish associated with OpenBSD.
And you have to admit it would bring nice little change to the front page, and maybe a few more "WTF is this?!?" posts. Especially if it was the sub logo from here:-)
Yes... I'm a fanatic, now go away you insensitive clod.
Of course, I am biased as I run this fun little operating system on a produciton machine. 20 days away from one year uptime *ahem*. Ok, maybe that's not that great but it works well for me.
I am glad to see that the team has forged ahead and taken a step that UNIX style operating systems have needed for quite some time. This is a wonderful step in the evoluction of security that ALL of *BSD/Linux/etc. should implement without delay. At least from an administrator's perspective, I think this should be the norm.
For those that are unfamiliar with OpenBSD, it is a derivative of BSD that focuses its efforts onto creating a secure system without bells and whistles.
99% of all code written can be written better faster (run and dev times) in a language other than C. C should only be used when an abstract model of memory cannot do the job. That is, if you need control over the way your data and code is laid out in physical memory, use C. Otherwise, use something else.
Programmers use compilers, and compilers should allow programmers to think abstractly instead of like a machine.
I think this last part of your comment most accurately describes your point of view. I believe if you don't know much about the machine (or do not want to know much about the machine) any language could suffice and possibly be faster than C in run and development time. However, my experience writing optomized code suggests that many optimizations that one can do by hand are only available with such a low level coding environment such as C; when you are familiar with the machine (pointer arithmatic comes to mind). The compiler/interpreter technology of the high level languages are never as good as someone willing to tune some C code, givin adequate time. How often are those very compilers and interpreters written in C? Now this is stepping around the matter of if it should be done or not. After all, computers are getting faster every day. So why bother? Most code that is written isn't required to run at peak efficiency.
As the machines get more complex and difficult to understand what is going on. I believe what you say will be truer and truer. But only when the compilers are up to the task.
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I'm not aware of exactly what NSA stuff you are speaking of. One thing to keep in mind is that OpenBSD is based out of Canada, not the USA. And to my knowledge there is no laws involving the exportation of crytography. Enabling OpenBSD to utilize this in the fixing of security issues. Comming from the project are other such gems as OpenSSH, which we all love and use, right?
So, unfortunatly with a generic question you get a generic answer of stuff that can be found on a half dozen links on their front page.
And you have to admit it would bring nice little change to the front page, and maybe a few more "WTF is this?!?" posts. Especially if it was the sub logo from here :-)
Yes... I'm a fanatic, now go away you insensitive clod.
Of course, I am biased as I run this fun little operating system on a produciton machine. 20 days away from one year uptime *ahem*. Ok, maybe that's not that great but it works well for me.
I am glad to see that the team has forged ahead and taken a step that UNIX style operating systems have needed for quite some time. This is a wonderful step in the evoluction of security that ALL of *BSD/Linux/etc. should implement without delay. At least from an administrator's perspective, I think this should be the norm.
For those that are unfamiliar with OpenBSD, it is a derivative of BSD that focuses its efforts onto creating a secure system without bells and whistles.
As always this is my opinion..
99% of all code written can be written better faster (run and dev times) in a language other than C. C should only be used when an abstract model of memory cannot do the job. That is, if you need control over the way your data and code is laid out in physical memory, use C. Otherwise, use something else.
Programmers use compilers, and compilers should allow programmers to think abstractly instead of like a machine.
I think this last part of your comment most accurately describes your point of view. I believe if you don't know much about the machine (or do not want to know much about the machine) any language could suffice and possibly be faster than C in run and development time. However, my experience writing optomized code suggests that many optimizations that one can do by hand are only available with such a low level coding environment such as C; when you are familiar with the machine (pointer arithmatic comes to mind). The compiler/interpreter technology of the high level languages are never as good as someone willing to tune some C code, givin adequate time. How often are those very compilers and interpreters written in C? Now this is stepping around the matter of if it should be done or not. After all, computers are getting faster every day. So why bother? Most code that is written isn't required to run at peak efficiency.
As the machines get more complex and difficult to understand what is going on. I believe what you say will be truer and truer. But only when the compilers are up to the task.
As always... this is my opinion.
cheers,
snorggle