Educate yourself. Buffer overflow "exploits" don't work against the Java sandbox model.
Starting Wars -- WAS Re:prayers
on
Strike on Iraq
·
· Score: 1
"Well, there is a huge difference between ending a war and starting one. This is what separates justified and unjustified military action."
You are forgetting, of course, that we were not at war with Serbia over Kosovo, and that Kosovo is part of Serbia. Nonetheless, we launched a war to prevent the genocide there. We were not personally threatened in any way, nor had the Serbians attacked us.
Nor was our entry into WWII a simple matter of 'ending a war'. You need to read history a little more closely. FDR led us into war one step at a time, acting in ways that clearly violated our supposed neutrality, and the embargo on oil exports to Japan that was the catalyst for the Japanese attack is traditionally considered a form of warfare. It certainly was at the time. The Japanese insisted that we provoked the war. We won the war in the end, and we were right to fight it, but it is naive to suggest that the U.S. played no role in starting the war between the U.S. and Japan.
You read the definition, and still don't understand what it means, eh? I doubt you have a patriotic bone in your body. I'll try to explain it to you anyhow. Perhaps you can learn.
Loyalty to one's country is love and devotion to that country. That's patriotism. It isn't love and devotion to country to run your country down. It isn't love and devotion to country to refuse to support your country's actions once they are under way. It isn't love and devotion to country to give aid and comfort to a murderous despot like Saddam Hussein when your country is at war with him. If you don't understand that, there's no explaining it to you. It is equally evident that you don't understand what fascism is, but that's not surprising, since years of abuse of the term by the left has left the word largely devoid of objective meaning.
Patriotism is simply the duty of loyalty that citizens of a country owe to one another. There's room for disagreement, but not for disloyalty. In the end, fellow citizens have to be able to count on one another. It is a moral imperitive, and a practical necessity.
Disloyalty is continuing to carp and whine when the decision has been made. Disloyalty is currying favor with murderous dictators in the name of some inane devotion to "peace" which is really hatred of your own country, its ideals, its leaders, or its political system. Disloyalty is seeking to obstruct the prompt and efficient carrying out of a war, placing fellow citizen-soldiers at risk. Disloyalty is running down your elected leadership before hostile foreign audiences, giving aid and comfort to the enemy.
To be disloyal to one's country and fellow citizens is immoral. What does that say about the supposed 'conscience' of the unpatriotic? If you are an American and cannot be loyal, find a place you can be and move there. The rest of us don't need your dead weight dragging us down.
Re:Michael Moore's Letter to Governor Bush
on
Strike on Iraq
·
· Score: 1, Flamebait
Michael Moore is a clueless ass anyway. Virtually everything he says in the letter is either wrong or a lie, but that's nothing new. Truth has always been the first casualty where Michael Moore is concerned.
He's just pissed because he screwed up his London stage show by being a jerk.
The Windows Script Engine provides Windows operating systems with the ability to execute script code. Script code can be used to add functionality to web pages, or to automate tasks within the operating system or within a program. Script code can be written in several different scripting languages, such as Visual Basic Script, or JScript.
A flaw exists in the way by which the Windows Script Engine for JScript processes information. An attacker could exploit the vulnerability by constructing a web page that, when visited by the user, would execute code of the attacker's choice with the user's privileges. The web page could be hosted on a web site, or sent directly to the user in email.
Translation. Lack of a sandbox screws us again.
This is the kind of problem the Java sandbox resolves. ActiveX and dumbed-down scripting engines may satisfy web designers working in a Windows desktop world, but they are an invitation to disaster on a distributed network like the Internet.
Yet another reason to NOT use Outlook. Evolution, anyone?
Problem is, the math will more likely look like:
1. 1 song @ $0.70 x 1 download = $0.70
2. 1 album @ $7.00 x 1 download = $7.00
3. 499,999 copies of each downloaded from Gnutella/Limewire/etc. = priceless.
Which is no more than could potentially happen anytime their CD is sold. With tools like cdda2wav or cdparanoia and any number of encoders, it's easy. Here's the difference. People who are truly interested in the band--interested enough to find their website and purchase their music online in the first place--are probably much less likely to steal from them.
This is a psychological fact. It is easier to steal from some faceless corporation that a group of people who actually produce the product and whose music you enjoy.
Anti-social people will always steal. The key is to make money off the majority of people who are basically honest, and who want the band or solo artist to continue to produce without paying the RIAA tax.
A review of Sen. Wyden's site does not reveal any draft of the bill in question. However, based on comments in the article, it sounds like a good idea.
This is the same Sen. Wyden who has sponsored a Senate resolution on consumer's rights to use digital content. A link to the PDF here.
The advantage of mandatory labelling for consumer devices that have anti-copy technology installed is that the consumer can know, at a glance, whether the device in question will allow him or her to make fair use of digital content he or she has purchased.
Obviously, the Hollywood crowd would prefer such a bill never see the light of day, since it would make devices with anti-copying technology potentially very unpopular. I can imagine that Sony wouldn't be thrilled.
At the same time, I can foresee that this is the kind of domestic issue that could easily get buried under the current foreign policy and economic crises.
"Granted, the Israelis get huge foreign aid checks from Uncle Sam every year, but those go overwhelmingly toward military spending. The high-tech industry in Israel is almost completely civilian, and is privately funded, mostly by venture capital (much of which comes from the US, but it's hardly taxpayer dollars). And to claim that Israel, a country of six million people, poses significant competition to American companies is simply ludicrous."
Here's one source for you.
http://www.american.edu/carmel/nk3791a/financing.h tm
There are others. Look a little, if you are really interested, and can change your mind. Here's the point. Most of Israel's high tech sector is linked to its defense industry. American aid dollars that prop up the Israeli military also support joint research between the IDF and private individuals (almost entirely former IDF) who create these products. Also, since 1993 (and really before that, dating back to the Lion fighter project in the 1980's) the U.S. has been funding the Israeli high-tech industry through joint projects directly and indirectly. Some of the money is from the government, some is funnelled through American companies set up to accept targeted SBA funds which support the Israeli R&D, and some comes from the BIRD foundation. There's a lot of U.S. taxpayer money going that-a-way. Significant competition? Hey, that nation of six million people has more companies listed on American stock exchanges than any other nation in the world except the U.S. and Canada. Think about it.
"As for the arrest of three "cheering Isralies", this is a complete misrepresentation of fact, if not a bold-faced myth."
No it isn't. They were employees of a company operated by a rather shady character named Moshe Elmakias, a company named Urban Moving Systems, Inc. The story has been on Fox News (Carl Cameron did a 4-part story), the Philadelphia Mercury, and several other places, so if you haven't seen it, you have blinders on. When the company shut down, they left some customers in the cold, which is why they have been placed on blacklists by the movers watch sites.
Ironically, you could have found what I was referring to (okay it was 5 Israelis, not 3) on the israelinsider website, the sister site of israel21c. http://www.israelinsider.com/channels/diplomacy/ar ticles/dip_0142.htm.
That's their spin on it, for what it is worth.
Whether it is the alert about contacts with Israeli art students in March of last year, or the sixty Israelis arrested shortly after 9/11, there's plenty of evidence of extensive Israeli espionage activity in the U.S. I grant you, the U.S. government does its best to not see it, just as they covered up some of the more explosive aspects of the Liberty incident in '68. I suspect that much of Israeli spying in the U.S. is directed against the activities of pro-Palestinian groups in the U.S., and industrial/technical espionage, but given the huge sums of money going Israel's way from U.S. coffers, it would be naive, at best, to suggest that the Israelis don't have very good reasons to spy on us for all manner of things. No "conspiracy theory" is required to acknowledge the truth.
But of course, a lot of rabidly pro-Israel Americans are in denial as much as the government. That's because anytime anyone mentions Israeli spying, or has the audacity to suggest that the U.S.-Israeli relationship needs to be re-examined in light of U.S. interests, the speaker MUST be an anti-Semite.
What twaddle. Folks, don't be fooled by the people screaming "anti-Semitism". They are just trying to use scorn to pull the wool over your eyes. You don't have to be a Holocaust denier or other such nonsense to know that all is not kosher in the situation between the U.S. and Israel, or in the money connection between the U.S. and the Israeli high-tech industry.
Inevitably, when someone says anything negative about Israel, the word "anti-semitism" comes into play. This is in part due to the successful propaganda engine the Israelis have created.
Being suspicious of Israeli motives doesn't make you an anti-semite any more than being suspicious of Iraq makes you anti-Arab. But I doubt you have the intellect to appreciate that Fnkmaster.
First, let's consider the source of this article. Here is what Israel21c says about themselves.
"ISRAEL21c is a not-for-profit corporation organized under the laws of California that works with existing institutions and the media to inform Americans about 21st century Israel, its people, its institutions and its contributions to global society. ISRAEL21c creates, aggregates and broadly disseminates high-quality information to the American public about the Israel that exists beyond the pervasive imagery of conflict that characterizes so much of western media reporting. Our goal is to strengthen the vibrant and enduring partnership between the United States and Israel, and between Americans and Israelis."
Translation: They are a part of the American pro-Israel lobby, whose job it is to pull the blinkers over the eyes of Americans regarding whatever Israel is doing at the moment. In this case, they don't handle the Arab-Israeli conflict (they mention a sister org for that -- israelinsider). Rather, they propagandize for the Israeli high-tech industry, an industry largely created by American taxpayers and which directly competes with American companies. We won't talk about the underhanded way that came about.
So fair enough, they are pimping their nation's product. Let's look at what the article actually says, however.
"Meganet offers a patented non-linear data mapping technology, called VME (Virtual Matrix Encryption), that creates exceptionally random cipher text and combines it with a one million-bit key, which is unheard of in today's data security markets. Competing solutions offer a maximum of 256 bits."
Cut through the marketing bullshit, and this sounds like a variation on the old one-time pad. This isn't the first company to discover how wonderfully secure the one-time pad is. It it difficult to believe that this company has achieved a quantum leap in computer power such as would be necessary to support a one million bit key for any other kind of algorithm.
"All other encryption methods have been compromised in the last five to six years."
This is a quote from the founder of the company, a former IDF (Israeli Defense Force) tank commander. The statement is deceptive. Any form of encryption, OTHER THAN A ONE-TIME PAD, is susceptible to brute force attack if the key size is small enough. Some encryption methods, such as DES, are more vulnerable than others. PGP and GnuPG use default encryption that is pretty darn secure, and there hasn't been a successful cracking attempt a key of any reasonable size. The quote, by being deceptive, makes the product claims suspect.
"Backal stumbled onto the mathematical algorithm behind VMS when he was working as an engineer in the field of Wide Area Networking."
Highly unlikely story to begin with. One does not "stumble onto" mathematical algorithms -- not reliable ones, anyway. There is mention of a patent application, but no reference to any peer review. The fact that this company was ignored for two years is instructive -- if there was any substance to this, someone in the cryptography field would have taken a look at it. There is also the following:
"In an attempt to prove VME's strength, Meganet began offering prizes such as a Ferrari or $1m. to anyone who could break into a VME-protected file. So far, two million people have attempted to crack the code, but none have managed."
I try not to use bad language on public forums, but the most descriptive word I can come up with for this is "bullshit". If VME had ever put this out for that kind of money for a genuine trial, it would have been all over the Net. There is NO evidence I can discover that supports this claim. None. Nada. Zilch. This whole thing is really starting to smell bad.
The following two quotes give reason for pause as well.
"In November 1999, Meganet launched the company at the Comdex computer show in LA, California, hoping to attract corporate users. The company packed its 1,000 sq. ft booth with attractions, including a $1m. giveaway of Meganet software. Meganet proved a runaway success, and in the wake of the show it raised $5m. at a valuation of $50 to $60m. from new investors, most of them small, private investors. To date, the company has raised $10m., none of which comes from VCs."
"By December 2000, however, Meganet was in trouble. The company may have gained industry recognition, but it did not have sales. Nor could it raise money as the stock market had begun to crash."
You know what it means that money is raised from "small investors" without VC involvement? It generally means that you a dealing with a corporate con artist. I have some personal experience in dealing with a tech company that refused to take VC money. The reason for not raising money from VCs is simple. A venture capital firm will, on behalf of its funders, demand access to and a thorough review of the technology, something small investors aren't in a position to demand. If this was the real thing, there wouldn't be any need to hide the ball from the money guys. If you are a small investor, beware of companies that raise their money from small investors exclusively. It is a fundraising method that is the foundation of a great many frauds and impositions. If this is for real, somebody big would have invested -- but then, that might pose the same problem for the founder as having a VC involved, right?
Here is the part that worries me, however.
"Today, Meganet is rapidly becoming a significant US government vendor. Though it remains a small company, with just 25 employees, it won three out of four tenders released by the US government in this sector last year, beating giants like Verisign, RSA, Network Associates, Computer Associates, and IBM, to become sole-contractor on the projects."
Assuming this is true, it is disturbing. Let's look at what we have here. We have a former IDF officer who has come up with supposedly "unbreakable" encryption. It isn't peer reviewed, and he is apparently seeking security through obscurity (i.e. hides the ball) rather than publishing this wonder technology where others can take a look at it and see if there are any flaws. The company's R&D is in Israel, and when the company fails commercially, it starts getting U.S. Government contracts, presumably through the kinds of political connections that the America-Israel lobby (such as AIC and Israel21c) foster.
The Israelis have demonstrated that, despite the fact that the United States is their only real allies in the world, they won't hesitate to stab the Americans in the back when it serves Israeli interests. The Pollard spy case was only the tip of the iceberg for Israeli espionage in the US. Our own State Department has established that Israel has the most aggressive spying program in the U.S. of any ally, surpassing even such supposedly unfriendly nations as China. Remember the three Israelis in the van who were picked up by police after they were filmed cheering while the WTC collapsed? All former IDF members. They were released after a few weeks and rushed home, and the company they worked for simply disappeared.
I doubt VME has any wonder technology. I don't doubt that the Israeli intelligence apparatus would love to have us using their technology companies to protect our vital national secrets. Then they won't have a need for embarrassments like active intelligence agents in the US. They could simply download the information themselves, courtesy of our blindness in working with this somewhat unreliable ally.
Based on what I see in the article and the source, I wouldn't touch VME with a ten-foot pole.
Your comment is misleading. Java is cross-platform. Therefore, so is Swing.
Your link references a widget set for PersonalJava. PersonalJava is a "Java-lite" for memory restricted applications. The context of this discussion doesn't appear to include development for a memory-restricted environment.
Heh. Moneydance has been/.'d. Thanks for the link, I'll try it again later.
Personally, I'm tired of the same old FUD strutting around, loudly proclaiming that Java is too slow on the desktop. That's simply not true anymore, and it hasn't been true for a while.
No, you don't use Java for kernel hacking. You don't use C++/KDE/Gnome for kernel hacking either. Start adding widgets and a usable event model to your favorite "faster than Java" development platform and you start to see that Java isn't that slow.
Sound familiar? That's why Java is so popular. The very problems described in this interview are the kind of problems Java and its standard class libraries resolve.
However, this decision is only binding on courts that use a federal law basis for their decision.
If the state courts use a state law basis (i.e. a state version of prohibiting unreasonable searches and seizures), the state Supreme Court is perfectly free to outlaw the practice.
I have my doubts that Custer's Revenge was the "worst" game by the standards of the time. There have been a LOT of bad games out there.
But it is certainly not PC, I'll grant you that.
Python is a decent language. But it has a number of problems snip
It also has some bizarre language constructs that seem poorly thought out, and it probably more correctly considered an object-based than an object-oriented programming language, since encapsulation and data-hiding are matters of convention alone, which you would expect with a scripting language. The lack of compile-time type checking is unattractive in an applications or system development language too.
Python is a good language for certain purposes, but there's no reason to re-invent the wheel, or to use Python in place of Java. Given how easily Java bytecode is de-compiled, heck, you could even say it is open-source friendly, since it encourages protecting code through copyright rather than by trade secrets and patents.:)
I do wish that SWT had its own documentation and a separate download though. It would make it easier to use.
I haven't observed that Swing is that slow under JDK 1.4. Most complaints about Swing being slow are based on earlier versions.
That being said, I'm interested in evaluating SWT. Still, Swing is a nice toolkit, and the fact that it is so ubiquitous makes it an easy choice to use it to write against.
This would especially be the case if the preliminary injunction is upheld and suddenly the Java Plug-In shows up on millions of computers. Swing applets are pretty cool. Still, you could bundle swt.jar with your applet I guess.
So, the fact that java is an absolute nightmare from an end-user standpoint means... nothing, right?
Another pathetic Java-basher raises his head in a C# thread, opens his mouth, and burps up kaka...
Sigh. Where have I heard that before?
In the computer information systems lab at the b-school where you and rest of your luser buddies were trying to do bubble-sort with Visual Basic again?
..for this one. The truth is that Microsoft is simply being hoisted on its own petard.
Legislation is produced by lobbyists spending industry money to buy the votes of legislators. It is the politics that produces bad law that is the real problem. I can't say I see the Intertrust lawsuit as a winning situation, unless Microsoft, in its drive to defend itself, does damage to the very aspects of current US IP law that are causing so much heartburn amongst Slashdot users.
Want to have an impact on the DRM debate? Vote your conscience. Make it a priority. You may have to withold your vote from someone you normally agree with, or vote for someone you normally wouldn't. And let your representatives know, in plain but polite language, that you understand these issue, you expect them to understand these issues, and you expect them to represent you and not some industry lobbyist with a pocket full of bucks, or you will find someone else to represent you.
Slashdot Mirror
I realize you are an AC, but you are also wrong.
Educate yourself. Buffer overflow "exploits" don't work against the Java sandbox model.
"Well, there is a huge difference between ending a war and starting one. This is what separates justified and unjustified military action."
You are forgetting, of course, that we were not at war with Serbia over Kosovo, and that Kosovo is part of Serbia. Nonetheless, we launched a war to prevent the genocide there. We were not personally threatened in any way, nor had the Serbians attacked us.
Nor was our entry into WWII a simple matter of 'ending a war'. You need to read history a little more closely. FDR led us into war one step at a time, acting in ways that clearly violated our supposed neutrality, and the embargo on oil exports to Japan that was the catalyst for the Japanese attack is traditionally considered a form of warfare. It certainly was at the time. The Japanese insisted that we provoked the war. We won the war in the end, and we were right to fight it, but it is naive to suggest that the U.S. played no role in starting the war between the U.S. and Japan.
Not such a huge difference after all, is there?
You read the definition, and still don't understand what it means, eh? I doubt you have a patriotic bone in your body. I'll try to explain it to you anyhow. Perhaps you can learn.
Loyalty to one's country is love and devotion to that country. That's patriotism. It isn't love and devotion to country to run your country down. It isn't love and devotion to country to refuse to support your country's actions once they are under way. It isn't love and devotion to country to give aid and comfort to a murderous despot like Saddam Hussein when your country is at war with him. If you don't understand that, there's no explaining it to you. It is equally evident that you don't understand what fascism is, but that's not surprising, since years of abuse of the term by the left has left the word largely devoid of objective meaning.
Right on, quitcherbitchen.
Patriotism is simply the duty of loyalty that citizens of a country owe to one another. There's room for disagreement, but not for disloyalty. In the end, fellow citizens have to be able to count on one another. It is a moral imperitive, and a practical necessity.
Disloyalty is continuing to carp and whine when the decision has been made. Disloyalty is currying favor with murderous dictators in the name of some inane devotion to "peace" which is really hatred of your own country, its ideals, its leaders, or its political system. Disloyalty is seeking to obstruct the prompt and efficient carrying out of a war, placing fellow citizen-soldiers at risk. Disloyalty is running down your elected leadership before hostile foreign audiences, giving aid and comfort to the enemy.
To be disloyal to one's country and fellow citizens is immoral. What does that say about the supposed 'conscience' of the unpatriotic? If you are an American and cannot be loyal, find a place you can be and move there. The rest of us don't need your dead weight dragging us down.
Michael Moore is a clueless ass anyway. Virtually everything he says in the letter is either wrong or a lie, but that's nothing new. Truth has always been the first casualty where Michael Moore is concerned.
He's just pissed because he screwed up his London stage show by being a jerk.
From the technical bulletin:
Translation. Lack of a sandbox screws us again.
This is the kind of problem the Java sandbox resolves. ActiveX and dumbed-down scripting engines may satisfy web designers working in a Windows desktop world, but they are an invitation to disaster on a distributed network like the Internet.
Yet another reason to NOT use Outlook. Evolution, anyone?
It's called satire. If you don't know what that is, blame your teachers. Or maybe is isn't their fault, because you are the moron.
I had this same problem with dell with an Inspiron 7000
I'm inclined to think that certain Dell laptop designs are prone to overheating, and this screws them up in various ways.
I'm not going to buy Dell again anytime soon.
Which is no more than could potentially happen anytime their CD is sold. With tools like cdda2wav or cdparanoia and any number of encoders, it's easy. Here's the difference. People who are truly interested in the band--interested enough to find their website and purchase their music online in the first place--are probably much less likely to steal from them.
This is a psychological fact. It is easier to steal from some faceless corporation that a group of people who actually produce the product and whose music you enjoy.
Anti-social people will always steal. The key is to make money off the majority of people who are basically honest, and who want the band or solo artist to continue to produce without paying the RIAA tax.
A review of Sen. Wyden's site does not reveal any draft of the bill in question. However, based on comments in the article, it sounds like a good idea.
This is the same Sen. Wyden who has sponsored a Senate resolution on consumer's rights to use digital content. A link to the PDF here.
The advantage of mandatory labelling for consumer devices that have anti-copy technology installed is that the consumer can know, at a glance, whether the device in question will allow him or her to make fair use of digital content he or she has purchased.
Obviously, the Hollywood crowd would prefer such a bill never see the light of day, since it would make devices with anti-copying technology potentially very unpopular. I can imagine that Sony wouldn't be thrilled.
At the same time, I can foresee that this is the kind of domestic issue that could easily get buried under the current foreign policy and economic crises.
"Granted, the Israelis get huge foreign aid checks from Uncle Sam every year, but those go overwhelmingly toward military spending. The high-tech industry in Israel is almost completely civilian, and is privately funded, mostly by venture capital (much of which comes from the US, but it's hardly taxpayer dollars). And to claim that Israel, a country of six million people, poses significant competition to American companies is simply ludicrous."
Here's one source for you. http://www.american.edu/carmel/nk3791a/financing.h tm
There are others. Look a little, if you are really interested, and can change your mind. Here's the point. Most of Israel's high tech sector is linked to its defense industry. American aid dollars that prop up the Israeli military also support joint research between the IDF and private individuals (almost entirely former IDF) who create these products. Also, since 1993 (and really before that, dating back to the Lion fighter project in the 1980's) the U.S. has been funding the Israeli high-tech industry through joint projects directly and indirectly. Some of the money is from the government, some is funnelled through American companies set up to accept targeted SBA funds which support the Israeli R&D, and some comes from the BIRD foundation. There's a lot of U.S. taxpayer money going that-a-way. Significant competition? Hey, that nation of six million people has more companies listed on American stock exchanges than any other nation in the world except the U.S. and Canada. Think about it.
"As for the arrest of three "cheering Isralies", this is a complete misrepresentation of fact, if not a bold-faced myth."
No it isn't. They were employees of a company operated by a rather shady character named Moshe Elmakias, a company named Urban Moving Systems, Inc. The story has been on Fox News (Carl Cameron did a 4-part story), the Philadelphia Mercury, and several other places, so if you haven't seen it, you have blinders on. When the company shut down, they left some customers in the cold, which is why they have been placed on blacklists by the movers watch sites.
Ironically, you could have found what I was referring to (okay it was 5 Israelis, not 3) on the israelinsider website, the sister site of israel21c. http://www.israelinsider.com/channels/diplomacy/ar ticles/dip_0142.htm.
That's their spin on it, for what it is worth.
Whether it is the alert about contacts with Israeli art students in March of last year, or the sixty Israelis arrested shortly after 9/11, there's plenty of evidence of extensive Israeli espionage activity in the U.S. I grant you, the U.S. government does its best to not see it, just as they covered up some of the more explosive aspects of the Liberty incident in '68. I suspect that much of Israeli spying in the U.S. is directed against the activities of pro-Palestinian groups in the U.S., and industrial/technical espionage, but given the huge sums of money going Israel's way from U.S. coffers, it would be naive, at best, to suggest that the Israelis don't have very good reasons to spy on us for all manner of things. No "conspiracy theory" is required to acknowledge the truth.
But of course, a lot of rabidly pro-Israel Americans are in denial as much as the government. That's because anytime anyone mentions Israeli spying, or has the audacity to suggest that the U.S.-Israeli relationship needs to be re-examined in light of U.S. interests, the speaker MUST be an anti-Semite.
What twaddle. Folks, don't be fooled by the people screaming "anti-Semitism". They are just trying to use scorn to pull the wool over your eyes. You don't have to be a Holocaust denier or other such nonsense to know that all is not kosher in the situation between the U.S. and Israel, or in the money connection between the U.S. and the Israeli high-tech industry.
Inevitably, when someone says anything negative about Israel, the word "anti-semitism" comes into play. This is in part due to the successful propaganda engine the Israelis have created.
Being suspicious of Israeli motives doesn't make you an anti-semite any more than being suspicious of Iraq makes you anti-Arab. But I doubt you have the intellect to appreciate that Fnkmaster.
First, let's consider the source of this article. Here is what Israel21c says about themselves.
"ISRAEL21c is a not-for-profit corporation organized under the laws of California that works with existing institutions and the media to inform Americans about 21st century Israel, its people, its institutions and its contributions to global society. ISRAEL21c creates, aggregates and broadly disseminates high-quality information to the American public about the Israel that exists beyond the pervasive imagery of conflict that characterizes so much of western media reporting. Our goal is to strengthen the vibrant and enduring partnership between the United States and Israel, and between Americans and Israelis."
Translation: They are a part of the American pro-Israel lobby, whose job it is to pull the blinkers over the eyes of Americans regarding whatever Israel is doing at the moment. In this case, they don't handle the Arab-Israeli conflict (they mention a sister org for that -- israelinsider). Rather, they propagandize for the Israeli high-tech industry, an industry largely created by American taxpayers and which directly competes with American companies. We won't talk about the underhanded way that came about.
So fair enough, they are pimping their nation's product. Let's look at what the article actually says, however.
"Meganet offers a patented non-linear data mapping technology, called VME (Virtual Matrix Encryption), that creates exceptionally random cipher text and combines it with a one million-bit key, which is unheard of in today's data security markets. Competing solutions offer a maximum of 256 bits."
Cut through the marketing bullshit, and this sounds like a variation on the old one-time pad. This isn't the first company to discover how wonderfully secure the one-time pad is. It it difficult to believe that this company has achieved a quantum leap in computer power such as would be necessary to support a one million bit key for any other kind of algorithm.
"All other encryption methods have been compromised in the last five to six years."
This is a quote from the founder of the company, a former IDF (Israeli Defense Force) tank commander. The statement is deceptive. Any form of encryption, OTHER THAN A ONE-TIME PAD, is susceptible to brute force attack if the key size is small enough. Some encryption methods, such as DES, are more vulnerable than others. PGP and GnuPG use default encryption that is pretty darn secure, and there hasn't been a successful cracking attempt a key of any reasonable size. The quote, by being deceptive, makes the product claims suspect.
"Backal stumbled onto the mathematical algorithm behind VMS when he was working as an engineer in the field of Wide Area Networking."
Highly unlikely story to begin with. One does not "stumble onto" mathematical algorithms -- not reliable ones, anyway. There is mention of a patent application, but no reference to any peer review. The fact that this company was ignored for two years is instructive -- if there was any substance to this, someone in the cryptography field would have taken a look at it. There is also the following:
"In an attempt to prove VME's strength, Meganet began offering prizes such as a Ferrari or $1m. to anyone who could break into a VME-protected file. So far, two million people have attempted to crack the code, but none have managed."
I try not to use bad language on public forums, but the most descriptive word I can come up with for this is "bullshit". If VME had ever put this out for that kind of money for a genuine trial, it would have been all over the Net. There is NO evidence I can discover that supports this claim. None. Nada. Zilch. This whole thing is really starting to smell bad.
The following two quotes give reason for pause as well.
"In November 1999, Meganet launched the company at the Comdex computer show in LA, California, hoping to attract corporate users. The company packed its 1,000 sq. ft booth with attractions, including a $1m. giveaway of Meganet software. Meganet proved a runaway success, and in the wake of the show it raised $5m. at a valuation of $50 to $60m. from new investors, most of them small, private investors. To date, the company has raised $10m., none of which comes from VCs."
"By December 2000, however, Meganet was in trouble. The company may have gained industry recognition, but it did not have sales. Nor could it raise money as the stock market had begun to crash."
You know what it means that money is raised from "small investors" without VC involvement? It generally means that you a dealing with a corporate con artist. I have some personal experience in dealing with a tech company that refused to take VC money. The reason for not raising money from VCs is simple. A venture capital firm will, on behalf of its funders, demand access to and a thorough review of the technology, something small investors aren't in a position to demand. If this was the real thing, there wouldn't be any need to hide the ball from the money guys. If you are a small investor, beware of companies that raise their money from small investors exclusively. It is a fundraising method that is the foundation of a great many frauds and impositions. If this is for real, somebody big would have invested -- but then, that might pose the same problem for the founder as having a VC involved, right?
Here is the part that worries me, however.
"Today, Meganet is rapidly becoming a significant US government vendor. Though it remains a small company, with just 25 employees, it won three out of four tenders released by the US government in this sector last year, beating giants like Verisign, RSA, Network Associates, Computer Associates, and IBM, to become sole-contractor on the projects."
Assuming this is true, it is disturbing. Let's look at what we have here. We have a former IDF officer who has come up with supposedly "unbreakable" encryption. It isn't peer reviewed, and he is apparently seeking security through obscurity (i.e. hides the ball) rather than publishing this wonder technology where others can take a look at it and see if there are any flaws. The company's R&D is in Israel, and when the company fails commercially, it starts getting U.S. Government contracts, presumably through the kinds of political connections that the America-Israel lobby (such as AIC and Israel21c) foster.
The Israelis have demonstrated that, despite the fact that the United States is their only real allies in the world, they won't hesitate to stab the Americans in the back when it serves Israeli interests. The Pollard spy case was only the tip of the iceberg for Israeli espionage in the US. Our own State Department has established that Israel has the most aggressive spying program in the U.S. of any ally, surpassing even such supposedly unfriendly nations as China. Remember the three Israelis in the van who were picked up by police after they were filmed cheering while the WTC collapsed? All former IDF members. They were released after a few weeks and rushed home, and the company they worked for simply disappeared.
I doubt VME has any wonder technology. I don't doubt that the Israeli intelligence apparatus would love to have us using their technology companies to protect our vital national secrets. Then they won't have a need for embarrassments like active intelligence agents in the US. They could simply download the information themselves, courtesy of our blindness in working with this somewhat unreliable ally.
Based on what I see in the article and the source, I wouldn't touch VME with a ten-foot pole.
Your comment is misleading. Java is cross-platform. Therefore, so is Swing.
Your link references a widget set for PersonalJava. PersonalJava is a "Java-lite" for memory restricted applications. The context of this discussion doesn't appear to include development for a memory-restricted environment.
Heh. Moneydance has been /.'d. Thanks for the link, I'll try it again later.
Personally, I'm tired of the same old FUD strutting around, loudly proclaiming that Java is too slow on the desktop. That's simply not true anymore, and it hasn't been true for a while.
No, you don't use Java for kernel hacking. You don't use C++/KDE/Gnome for kernel hacking either. Start adding widgets and a usable event model to your favorite "faster than Java" development platform and you start to see that Java isn't that slow.
Sound familiar? That's why Java is so popular. The very problems described in this interview are the kind of problems Java and its standard class libraries resolve.
However, this decision is only binding on courts that use a federal law basis for their decision. If the state courts use a state law basis (i.e. a state version of prohibiting unreasonable searches and seizures), the state Supreme Court is perfectly free to outlaw the practice.
I agree that it is unfortunate that he didn't make the source available. However, it is certainly free software, since he isn't charging for it.
It isn't Open Source software. Maybe someone should ask him to post the source code.
I have my doubts that Custer's Revenge was the "worst" game by the standards of the time. There have been a LOT of bad games out there. But it is certainly not PC, I'll grant you that.
...since this would obviously require a separate download of native code.
Python is a decent language. But it has a number of problems snip
It also has some bizarre language constructs that seem poorly thought out, and it probably more correctly considered an object-based than an object-oriented programming language, since encapsulation and data-hiding are matters of convention alone, which you would expect with a scripting language. The lack of compile-time type checking is unattractive in an applications or system development language too.
Python is a good language for certain purposes, but there's no reason to re-invent the wheel, or to use Python in place of Java. Given how easily Java bytecode is de-compiled, heck, you could even say it is open-source friendly, since it encourages protecting code through copyright rather than by trade secrets and patents. :)
I do wish that SWT had its own documentation and a separate download though. It would make it easier to use.
I haven't observed that Swing is that slow under JDK 1.4. Most complaints about Swing being slow are based on earlier versions.
That being said, I'm interested in evaluating SWT. Still, Swing is a nice toolkit, and the fact that it is so ubiquitous makes it an easy choice to use it to write against.
This would especially be the case if the preliminary injunction is upheld and suddenly the Java Plug-In shows up on millions of computers. Swing applets are pretty cool. Still, you could bundle swt.jar with your applet I guess.
So, the fact that java is an absolute nightmare from an end-user standpoint means... nothing, right?
Another pathetic Java-basher raises his head in a C# thread, opens his mouth, and burps up kaka...
Sigh. Where have I heard that before?
In the computer information systems lab at the b-school where you and rest of your luser buddies were trying to do bubble-sort with Visual Basic again?
"If you plan to sup with the devil, it is best to bring a long spoon"
Amen. But don't expect anybody at the Mono project to pay attention. Maybe they expect--and intend--to go to court over .NET. We shall see.
..for this one. The truth is that Microsoft is simply being hoisted on its own petard.
Legislation is produced by lobbyists spending industry money to buy the votes of legislators. It is the politics that produces bad law that is the real problem. I can't say I see the Intertrust lawsuit as a winning situation, unless Microsoft, in its drive to defend itself, does damage to the very aspects of current US IP law that are causing so much heartburn amongst Slashdot users.
Want to have an impact on the DRM debate? Vote your conscience. Make it a priority. You may have to withold your vote from someone you normally agree with, or vote for someone you normally wouldn't. And let your representatives know, in plain but polite language, that you understand these issue, you expect them to understand these issues, and you expect them to represent you and not some industry lobbyist with a pocket full of bucks, or you will find someone else to represent you.