Who reported that it was 3300 pages???? I saw Richard Clarke about 2 months ago, and he had a draft with him at the time. Nobody got to see it, but it was in an envelope and couldn't have been more than 80 pages... I don't think it was ever envisioned as being more than that.
I saw something similar at Sea World about a month ago. At the dolphin cove, where you can feed the dolphins, there were employees out on a little island in the cove with what looked like SLR cameras, but with big attachments at the bottom. From that vantage point, they could take pictures of people feeding the dolphins, and the pictures would come up at a booth by the people where you could buy a high quality print (presumably for $$$$ although I didn't check it out). My guess is that the attachments were a wireless network interface to a good quality digital camera, but that's just a guess because I can't see how else it would have worked...
My prediction: GNU/Linux users will drop to zero after everyone gets tired of Stallman's relentless whining about the name, and then no one uses the "GNU" part any more. The result is that no one uses "GNU/Linux", and everyone uses "Linux".
You probably have the same deal we have, which involves students/faculty/staff just paying media costs. However, if you look at the fine print (at least in our deal) you'll see that the license is only good as long as you're at the school. If you graduate (or if an employee leaves) you're supposed to uninstall the software (maybe this will be the BSA's new cause!). I think it's even part of our "exit interview" for employees that are leaving to remind people to uninstall their institution-licensed software.
Excellent! I will definitely be looking for that, as it's the one major reason I haven't switched from Quicken yet. I don't need something that can just keep track of balances and add and subtract. That's the easy part. I need something that can help me plan!
This is all a question of independent review of academic standards. Java instruction from Stanford is not the same as Java instruction from MIT is not the same as Java instruction from UIUC et al. With the academic adoption of JCert, these programs would be the same. This is a valuable goal.
I sure hope none of those places have "Java instruction" as part of a C.S. degree program. Teaching a programming language, just like teaching any specific tool, is not what you're supposed to learn in a C.S. program. We have introductory courses that use C++, but the course is not a course in C++ -- it's a course in problem -solving and programming, and we use C++ so people pick it up along the way. But the problem-solving skills are the point, and they can translate easily to other languages. Similarly, I have taught data structures using Java -- but the point is the data structures, not the "Java tricks" they pick up along the way.
Currently, colleges and universities are free to adopt their own CS standards as long as they are not ridiculously lax.
Not true -- most C.S. programs are accredited by the CSAB (Computer Science Accreditation Board), and as such are not "free to adopt their own CS standards." Now some of the best programs are not accredited (CMU, for instance), but they know they're good and so don't go through the hassle. However, lots of good ones are (MIT and Berkeley, for example), and it certainly serves as a floor below which bad programs may not sink.
Enforced certifications in Java and SQL would tighten things up considerably, and they should be implemented today.
Certifications are tool-oriented, and as such are appropriate for training programs, not higher education. Training programs are good for what their purpose is, but don't be deluded into thinking that's what education is about.
I wanted to see if I could find transcripts of this hearing to see what exactly was said, and if any of the senators were clueful enough to call him on this. I couldn't find transcripts of anything except the opening statements, but there's an interesting paragraph in Eisner's opening statement:
There is another issue I'd like to clarify. Disney and other content
owners are not seeking to stop home taping or eliminate "fair use." We
are not here because we want to hinder libraries and college
professors in using portions of creative works for scholarly
research. Nor are we here because we want to interfere with consumers
who wish to make a home copy of Broadcast and basic cable TV programs
for their own personal time-shifted viewing. We are confident that the
government can act to facilitate the needed technology standards
without endangering home taping or fair use.
So if you take him at his word here, he wants to preserve fair use, including personal taping for time-shifting and that sort of thing. Do you think he can be believed here?
Re:Reminds me of the time......
on
iWarez
·
· Score: 1
Good thing I moved my office to the third floor a few months ago.... keep up AME!:-)
Reminds me of the time......
on
iWarez
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Wow, things change, and things stay the same.
I suppose I can admit this publicly, since the statute of limitations has run out now...:-)
Way back in something like 1983, I worked for a computer store that sold PC compatibles (a "Corona" if anyone remembers those!), and we had gotten some ethernet cards to try out some simple networking. Only problem was that all our machines ran MS-DOS 1.25, and the networking drivers required the new device structure in version 2.0. We ordered the new system, but I didn't want to wait the 2-3 weeks to receive it before playing with the new equipment, so I made a trip to the local IBM store (yes kids, IBM set up entire stores for selling the IBM PC) with a disk. I told the guys in the store that I had an IBM PC, and was having problem with this disk -- could I try it out on their computer? Hmmmm... sure seems to read fine here -- wonder it it will re-format? Wow, that worked too. Can I write to it (...copies some file...). Well, I guess this disk is ok, and I need to figure out what's wrong with my system. Thanks guys, I'll get back to you!
And then I had a floppy with PC-DOS 2.0 on it (which worked fine on our non-IBM machines until the version we bought came in).
Sigh... maybe I'm just old, but I think I'd have a hard time having the audacity of doing the same thing today...
I hate to be harsh, but there is some of the most phenomenal crap posted on this story that I've seen on slashdot in a while. This is what I do guys, so let me clear up some things:
First, to all the people who keep saying "factoring isn't NP-complete" blah, blah, blah. That's not even a sensible question, since "factoring" isn't a decision problem. However, you *can* define a related decision problem that shows that if P=NP, then you can factor in polynomial time. So if indeed someone came up with an O(n) time algorithm for an NP-complete problem, then factoring would definitely be doable in polynomial time, and unless this were some really bizarre problem then factoring would most likely be pretty easy.
Second, factoring isn't the only thing that's affected here. If all problems in NP are efficiently solvable, then *all* cryptographic algorithms (public key or symmetric) are susceptible to known-plaintext attack. Meaning, if you know a plaintext and corresponding ciphertext, you can find the decryption key --- since that's always trivial to do with a public key algorithm (since you can create the ciphertext yourself), they'd all be easy to break.
So yes, public key crypto would cease to exist as we know it --- the only hope would be to find a function that's maybe O(n) to encrypt and Omega(n^10) to break, but an exponential time separation wouldn't be possible any more.
But symmetric key crypto would also be severely damaged as well.
Fortunately, most people think this is pretty unlikely!
Their press release says "open source", but what exactly backs that up??? If you follow the download link you get to something called "VP3 for Windows". Hmmmm.... seems binary-only (no source), and only for Windows, and it costs $395!
I think the point that's missed here is that this is not a problem with the FSS, but with how RedHat (and some others) have interpretted it./usr/bin is for standard binaries -- but what is "standard"?
Personally, I don't think anything with a GUI is a "standard Unix utility", and has no business being in/usr/bin. I started using KDE before RedHat started packaging it, and compiled it myself where it should have been --/opt/kde. That keeps everything nice and compartmentalized. I just about choked when I started using RPMs and saw that RedHat had put everything in/usr/bin. Add gnome in there as well, and you've just got a completely stupid situation.
Unfortunately, I'm faced with the same problem many other people are: use a package manager, or have a decent filesystem layout. I chose the package manager, because I have so much stuff on my system these days that dependency checking is extremely valuable. And with that in mind, I use RPMs for everything, and don't really compile anything myself any more (well... mostly). Yes, I could (and did at one time) get the SRPMS and change the spec file to put things where they should be, but honestly I just don't want to take the time to muck with that any more. So I'll just hold my nose and try not to look too much at where the files are kept....
Wow -- you'd think DoJ lawyers would be better than this. I would hope they are better than this because they do sometimes legitimately defend our interests. But there are two extremely blatant mistakes on their first page alone.
First, they say: "Plaintiffs have not been prosecuted under the DMCA, nor have they been threatened with
such prosecution." Hello? Did they read the RIAA letter that started this whole business? Of course they were threatened!
Second, they say: "it appears that they have not foregone a single publication of any material as a
result of those concerns" -- again, hello???? Are they not aware of the basic facts in this case, that Felton and company had to withdraw their paper from the first conference due to these threats from the RIAA? And only after filing this case and seeking permission did they actually get to publish the paper, at a later conference, many months later?
Come on guys -- if you're going to file a statement, at least get the basic facts of the case right!
Gee, who is surprised? After all, protecting privacy might get in the way of some company making more money. And items 1 through 10 on Bush's list of priorities are all "See that companies can make as much money as possible."
Alaska environment vs. ability of companies to make more money? No contest. Arsenic in drinking water vs. ability of companies to make more money? No contest. Anti-competitive practices of Microsoft vs. their ability to make more money? No contest.
Has there been ANY decision that the Bush administration has made that hasn't come down on that corporate side of things? Individual rights and the environment are not only taking a back seat, but they're back there in the trunk, locked up tight. The next 3 years are going to seem like a really long time, people....
I was at the Usenix Security Symposium where this result was presented, and I've got to say that while it is marginally cool it is not a real, practical security threat. The only real information that's definitely given away is the length of the password. They build a hidden Markov model that can rank possible passwords by probability -- that allows you to find passwords faster in a brute force search, but there are so many uncertainties that it would still never work in the real world, with real-length passwords (their tests used a reduced alphabet and short passwords... I think they only used a set of 15 possible characters for their passwords).
The timings that were used as a basic model were also taken from experienced touch-typists. The woman who presented the results said that there is a very simple countermeasure (she was joking, I think, but it's a very valid point): if you normally touch-type, just use a single finger to hunt-and-peck your passwords -- then the timings aren't what they "should" have been, and in fact their attack could actually make things worse by sending you down the wrong path to the password.
Anyway, I'm surprised this has gotten so much attention -- it is cool, but it really isn't practical in the least....
You know, I can understand the initial gut reaction, but that's really a nonsensical anti-U.S. stance that Alan is taking. In particular, does he really think he's any better off where he is? Let's not forget that the E.U. has it's own law in the works that's very, very similar to the DMCA (see eurorights.org).
In reality, he (or any other European programmer) is no safer at home than they are traveling to the U.S., although I do suppose that being in jail closer to your home is somewhat comforting...
Rocky Ross wrote an interesting article on this in the "Education Forum" of the most recent SIGACT News. His conclusion: Java is not a good language for introductory courses. He makes some good points, among which are that in order to make the language familiar to C/C++ programmers, Java inherited many of the ugly features of C and C++ (his big example was the poor block structure for conditionals). And I have never met anyone who has taught C/C++ as an intro course (which I have done) and thought it was a good language from a pedagogical standpoint. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that there are very few languages that I can think of that are WORSE than C and C++ as intro languages....
The good news: Java is better than C or C++ as an intro language.
Clearly this was just made up without thinking about it at all. Let's work backwards starting with the idea of brute-forcing a 128-bit key and see what we get:
2^128 keys, divided by 1000 machines, divided by 315576000 seconds in 10 years, gives right around 10^27, or 0.5*10^27 trial encryptions on average. So these 1000 machines would have to do 0.5*10^27 trial encryptions per second in order to break a 128 bit key. Assuming a 20-cycle/encryption machine, that means that you'd need a 10^28 Hz machine for each of these. That's a 10 Giga-Giga-Giga Hz machine (there's probably another name for it).
So assuming that the encryption scheme is sound (requiring brute force for attacks), this is a lot more secure than they're suggesting here...
Yeah, I can see how great this would work with Windows: "You have worked for 2 seconds so I am changing your IP address. Windows must be restarted in order for this change to take effect. Restart now?":-)
HP's printers are still shipping with Windows-only drivers... and Windows-only configuration tools... and described as
"Linux-compatible" in their advertisements.
Gee, maybe they figured that Linux users could actually use the Internet and get the Linux drivers. You are aware that HP is the only printer company (at least that I know of) that is officially supporting Linux, don't you? Do a search for "linux" on the HP web pages and you get a lot of stuff. Do that on the Epson pages and you get zip. Look
here for the actual open source drivers on sourceforge.
This was precisely the reason that I bought an HP printer recently when my Epson finally gave up the ghost.
So to Bruce: Know that at least in this one case, the fact that you're there and that HP is supporting Linux has helped an actual sale. Even if you insist on the silly "GNU/Linux" moniker, I can still respect that!:-)
Well, there's certainly something good to come from this. It's so incredibly outrageous that it made me get off my complacent ass and send letters to my reps in Washington.
You're forgetting that the binary incompatibility things affect any version of gcc.
If you have 2.95 and start updating to 3.0, you'll run into the exact same binary compatibility problems you'll have when
you start updating from 2.96 to 3.0.
No, I'm not forgetting this. Yes, the upgrade to 3.0 will eventually be painful. But why oh why make the problem that much worse by picking a "transitional" compiler that is neither forward nor backward compatible?
You've changed the 2.95->3.0 pain into pain for 2.95->2.96 and more pain gor 2.96->3.0.
Formats change, and for the most part this is good (progress, and all that). However, it should be managed in a reasonable manner so that you don't have to go through multiple changes on the way to the "new and improved" version. Sorry guys, but that's just common sense to me...
But why would you want to? The version we ship produces better code, has more bugfixes and less known problems
and is binary compatible with the rest of the distrubution.
Using gcc 2.95.3 is setting you up for a world of PM.
Thank you for pointing out precisely why this compiler decision was such a bad mistake on Redhat's part. Upgrading to a newer compiler (as will happen with the 3.0 release) will break binary compatibility "with the rest of the distribution." So either we have to recompile everything from SRPMs, or wait to get a whole new distribution from RedHat in order to use any new compilers. Great.
This was one of the main reasons I didn't upgrade to 7.0 (in addition to the fact that at our install parties it was the single buggiest installation procedure of any distribution I've ever worked with, except maybe some early, flakey Mandrake distributions), and it looks like I'll be sticking in here and avoiding 7.1 too. Maybe it's time to seriously consider Debian again (I went from Redhat to Debian and back to Redhat... now maybe back to Debian again?)
So what? They were in international airspace. It's none of your damn business what they were doing.
2. Illegal entrance within P.R.C. air territory
After being forced to make an emergency landing by one of the PRC fighters running into it. I'm sure there must be internationally recognized procedures for requesting an emergency landing -- did our pilots follow it? Even if not, a little latitude must be given for a damaged aircraft (especially when the damage was caused by PRC actions).
3. Illegal landing within P.R.C. military airfield
See number 2
Now, I don't care about "media spin". You don't have to listen to ANY media to know that this was 100% the fault of the Chinese. Only consider this: big slow poorly maneuverable propeller plane versus highly maneuverable fighter jet. If the jet was within 100 meters of the reconnaissance aircraft, then it was because it chose to be, and in doing so endangered not only itself but the 24 people on board the larger plane.
The Chinese should be apologizing profusely, and yet they demand an apology? This insults my intelligence, and it's starting to make me pretty pissed off.
I'm pretty familiar with the Rijndael algorithm, so I glanced quickly through the FIPS document to see if they changed the algorithm. It looks at first glance to be exactly Rijndael, with one minor reduction in generality: The blocksize is fixed to be 128-bits, rather than the variable length block (128, 192, or 256 bits) in the original Rijndael spec. That doesn't seem to be a particularly important change (128 bits is more than enough).
Now of course, you can still be paranoid if you like, and here's a suggestion if you need one: maybe that particular algorithm was selected from the 5 finalists because the NSA could break it.
Probably not likely (in retrospect, DES turned out to be much stronger than suspected), but you can cling to that if you need some conspiracy theories!:-)
Slashdot Mirror
Who reported that it was 3300 pages???? I saw Richard Clarke about 2 months ago, and he had a draft with him at the time. Nobody got to see it, but it was in an envelope and couldn't have been more than 80 pages... I don't think it was ever envisioned as being more than that.
I saw something similar at Sea World about a month ago. At the dolphin cove, where you can feed the dolphins, there were employees out on a little island in the cove with what looked like SLR cameras, but with big attachments at the bottom. From that vantage point, they could take pictures of people feeding the dolphins, and the pictures would come up at a booth by the people where you could buy a high quality print (presumably for $$$$ although I didn't check it out). My guess is that the attachments were a wireless network interface to a good quality digital camera, but that's just a guess because I can't see how else it would have worked...
My prediction: GNU/Linux users will drop to zero after everyone gets tired of Stallman's relentless whining about the name, and then no one uses the "GNU" part any more. The result is that no one uses "GNU/Linux", and everyone uses "Linux".
You probably have the same deal we have, which involves students/faculty/staff just paying media costs. However, if you look at the fine print (at least in our deal) you'll see that the license is only good as long as you're at the school. If you graduate (or if an employee leaves) you're supposed to uninstall the software (maybe this will be the BSA's new cause!). I think it's even part of our "exit interview" for employees that are leaving to remind people to uninstall their institution-licensed software.
Excellent! I will definitely be looking for that, as it's the one major reason I haven't switched from Quicken yet. I don't need something that can just keep track of balances and add and subtract. That's the easy part. I need something that can help me plan!
I sure hope none of those places have "Java instruction" as part of a C.S. degree program. Teaching a programming language, just like teaching any specific tool, is not what you're supposed to learn in a C.S. program. We have introductory courses that use C++, but the course is not a course in C++ -- it's a course in problem -solving and programming, and we use C++ so people pick it up along the way. But the problem-solving skills are the point, and they can translate easily to other languages. Similarly, I have taught data structures using Java -- but the point is the data structures, not the "Java tricks" they pick up along the way.
Currently, colleges and universities are free to adopt their own CS standards as long as they are not ridiculously lax.
Not true -- most C.S. programs are accredited by the CSAB (Computer Science Accreditation Board), and as such are not "free to adopt their own CS standards." Now some of the best programs are not accredited (CMU, for instance), but they know they're good and so don't go through the hassle. However, lots of good ones are (MIT and Berkeley, for example), and it certainly serves as a floor below which bad programs may not sink.
Enforced certifications in Java and SQL would tighten things up considerably, and they should be implemented today.
Certifications are tool-oriented, and as such are appropriate for training programs, not higher education. Training programs are good for what their purpose is, but don't be deluded into thinking that's what education is about.
There is another issue I'd like to clarify. Disney and other content owners are not seeking to stop home taping or eliminate "fair use." We are not here because we want to hinder libraries and college professors in using portions of creative works for scholarly research. Nor are we here because we want to interfere with consumers who wish to make a home copy of Broadcast and basic cable TV programs for their own personal time-shifted viewing. We are confident that the government can act to facilitate the needed technology standards without endangering home taping or fair use.
So if you take him at his word here, he wants to preserve fair use, including personal taping for time-shifting and that sort of thing. Do you think he can be believed here?
Good thing I moved my office to the third floor a few months ago.... keep up AME!
Wow, things change, and things stay the same.
:-)
I suppose I can admit this publicly, since the statute of limitations has run out now...
Way back in something like 1983, I worked for a computer store that sold PC compatibles (a "Corona" if anyone remembers those!), and we had gotten some ethernet cards to try out some simple networking. Only problem was that all our machines ran MS-DOS 1.25, and the networking drivers required the new device structure in version 2.0. We ordered the new system, but I didn't want to wait the 2-3 weeks to receive it before playing with the new equipment, so I made a trip to the local IBM store (yes kids, IBM set up entire stores for selling the IBM PC) with a disk. I told the guys in the store that I had an IBM PC, and was having problem with this disk -- could I try it out on their computer? Hmmmm... sure seems to read fine here -- wonder it it will re-format? Wow, that worked too. Can I write to it (...copies some file...). Well, I guess this disk is ok, and I need to figure out what's wrong with my system. Thanks guys, I'll get back to you!
And then I had a floppy with PC-DOS 2.0 on it (which worked fine on our non-IBM machines until the version we bought came in).
Sigh... maybe I'm just old, but I think I'd have a hard time having the audacity of doing the same thing today...
I hate to be harsh, but there is some of the most phenomenal crap posted on this story that I've seen on slashdot in a while. This is what I do guys, so let me clear up some things:
First, to all the people who keep saying "factoring isn't NP-complete" blah, blah, blah. That's not even a sensible question, since "factoring" isn't a decision problem. However, you *can* define a related decision problem that shows that if P=NP, then you can factor in polynomial time. So if indeed someone came up with an O(n) time algorithm for an NP-complete problem, then factoring would definitely be doable in polynomial time, and unless this were some really bizarre problem then factoring would most likely be pretty easy.
Second, factoring isn't the only thing that's affected here. If all problems in NP are efficiently solvable, then *all* cryptographic algorithms (public key or symmetric) are susceptible to known-plaintext attack. Meaning, if you know a plaintext and corresponding ciphertext, you can find the decryption key --- since that's always trivial to do with a public key algorithm (since you can create the ciphertext yourself), they'd all be easy to break.
So yes, public key crypto would cease to exist as we know it --- the only hope would be to find a function that's maybe O(n) to encrypt and Omega(n^10) to break, but an exponential time separation wouldn't be possible any more.
But symmetric key crypto would also be severely damaged as well.
Fortunately, most people think this is pretty unlikely!
Their press release says "open source", but what exactly backs that up??? If you follow the download link you get to something called "VP3 for Windows". Hmmmm.... seems binary-only (no source), and only for Windows, and it costs $395!
Am I missing something here????
I think the point that's missed here is that this is not a problem with the FSS, but with how RedHat (and some others) have interpretted it. /usr/bin is for standard binaries -- but what is "standard"?
/usr/bin. I started using KDE before RedHat started packaging it, and compiled it myself where it should have been -- /opt/kde. That keeps everything nice and compartmentalized. I just about choked when I started using RPMs and saw that RedHat had put everything in /usr/bin. Add gnome in there as well, and you've just got a completely stupid situation.
Personally, I don't think anything with a GUI is a "standard Unix utility", and has no business being in
Unfortunately, I'm faced with the same problem many other people are: use a package manager, or have a decent filesystem layout. I chose the package manager, because I have so much stuff on my system these days that dependency checking is extremely valuable. And with that in mind, I use RPMs for everything, and don't really compile anything myself any more (well... mostly). Yes, I could (and did at one time) get the SRPMS and change the spec file to put things where they should be, but honestly I just don't want to take the time to muck with that any more. So I'll just hold my nose and try not to look too much at where the files are kept....
First, they say: "Plaintiffs have not been prosecuted under the DMCA, nor have they been threatened with such prosecution." Hello? Did they read the RIAA letter that started this whole business? Of course they were threatened!
Second, they say: "it appears that they have not foregone a single publication of any material as a result of those concerns" -- again, hello???? Are they not aware of the basic facts in this case, that Felton and company had to withdraw their paper from the first conference due to these threats from the RIAA? And only after filing this case and seeking permission did they actually get to publish the paper, at a later conference, many months later?
Come on guys -- if you're going to file a statement, at least get the basic facts of the case right!
Gee, who is surprised? After all, protecting privacy might get in the way of some company making more money. And items 1 through 10 on Bush's list of priorities are all "See that companies can make as much money as possible."
Alaska environment vs. ability of companies to make more money? No contest. Arsenic in drinking water vs. ability of companies to make more money? No contest. Anti-competitive practices of Microsoft vs. their ability to make more money? No contest.
Has there been ANY decision that the Bush administration has made that hasn't come down on that corporate side of things? Individual rights and the environment are not only taking a back seat, but they're back there in the trunk, locked up tight. The next 3 years are going to seem like a really long time, people....
The timings that were used as a basic model were also taken from experienced touch-typists. The woman who presented the results said that there is a very simple countermeasure (she was joking, I think, but it's a very valid point): if you normally touch-type, just use a single finger to hunt-and-peck your passwords -- then the timings aren't what they "should" have been, and in fact their attack could actually make things worse by sending you down the wrong path to the password.
Anyway, I'm surprised this has gotten so much attention -- it is cool, but it really isn't practical in the least....
In reality, he (or any other European programmer) is no safer at home than they are traveling to the U.S., although I do suppose that being in jail closer to your home is somewhat comforting...
Rocky Ross wrote an interesting article on this in the "Education Forum" of the most recent SIGACT News. His conclusion: Java is not a good language for introductory courses. He makes some good points, among which are that in order to make the language familiar to C/C++ programmers, Java inherited many of the ugly features of C and C++ (his big example was the poor block structure for conditionals). And I have never met anyone who has taught C/C++ as an intro course (which I have done) and thought it was a good language from a pedagogical standpoint. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that there are very few languages that I can think of that are WORSE than C and C++ as intro languages....
The good news: Java is better than C or C++ as an intro language.
The bad news: It still sucks.
2^128 keys, divided by 1000 machines, divided by 315576000 seconds in 10 years, gives right around 10^27, or 0.5*10^27 trial encryptions on average. So these 1000 machines would have to do 0.5*10^27 trial encryptions per second in order to break a 128 bit key. Assuming a 20-cycle/encryption machine, that means that you'd need a 10^28 Hz machine for each of these. That's a 10 Giga-Giga-Giga Hz machine (there's probably another name for it).
So assuming that the encryption scheme is sound (requiring brute force for attacks), this is a lot more secure than they're suggesting here...
Yeah, I can see how great this would work with Windows: "You have worked for 2 seconds so I am changing your IP address. Windows must be restarted in order for this change to take effect. Restart now?" :-)
Gee, maybe they figured that Linux users could actually use the Internet and get the Linux drivers. You are aware that HP is the only printer company (at least that I know of) that is officially supporting Linux, don't you? Do a search for "linux" on the HP web pages and you get a lot of stuff. Do that on the Epson pages and you get zip. Look here for the actual open source drivers on sourceforge.
This was precisely the reason that I bought an HP printer recently when my Epson finally gave up the ghost.
So to Bruce: Know that at least in this one case, the fact that you're there and that HP is supporting Linux has helped an actual sale. Even if you insist on the silly "GNU/Linux" moniker, I can still respect that! :-)
Well, there's certainly something good to come from this. It's so incredibly outrageous that it made me get off my complacent ass and send letters to my reps in Washington.
In encourage everyone to do the same!
No, I'm not forgetting this. Yes, the upgrade to 3.0 will eventually be painful. But why oh why make the problem that much worse by picking a "transitional" compiler that is neither forward nor backward compatible? You've changed the 2.95->3.0 pain into pain for 2.95->2.96 and more pain gor 2.96->3.0.
Formats change, and for the most part this is good (progress, and all that). However, it should be managed in a reasonable manner so that you don't have to go through multiple changes on the way to the "new and improved" version. Sorry guys, but that's just common sense to me...
Using gcc 2.95.3 is setting you up for a world of PM.
Thank you for pointing out precisely why this compiler decision was such a bad mistake on Redhat's part. Upgrading to a newer compiler (as will happen with the 3.0 release) will break binary compatibility "with the rest of the distribution." So either we have to recompile everything from SRPMs, or wait to get a whole new distribution from RedHat in order to use any new compilers. Great.
This was one of the main reasons I didn't upgrade to 7.0 (in addition to the fact that at our install parties it was the single buggiest installation procedure of any distribution I've ever worked with, except maybe some early, flakey Mandrake distributions), and it looks like I'll be sticking in here and avoiding 7.1 too. Maybe it's time to seriously consider Debian again (I went from Redhat to Debian and back to Redhat... now maybe back to Debian again?)
So what? They were in international airspace. It's none of your damn business what they were doing.
2. Illegal entrance within P.R.C. air territory
After being forced to make an emergency landing by one of the PRC fighters running into it. I'm sure there must be internationally recognized procedures for requesting an emergency landing -- did our pilots follow it? Even if not, a little latitude must be given for a damaged aircraft (especially when the damage was caused by PRC actions).
3. Illegal landing within P.R.C. military airfield
See number 2
Now, I don't care about "media spin". You don't have to listen to ANY media to know that this was 100% the fault of the Chinese. Only consider this: big slow poorly maneuverable propeller plane versus highly maneuverable fighter jet. If the jet was within 100 meters of the reconnaissance aircraft, then it was because it chose to be, and in doing so endangered not only itself but the 24 people on board the larger plane.
The Chinese should be apologizing profusely, and yet they demand an apology? This insults my intelligence, and it's starting to make me pretty pissed off.
I'm pretty familiar with the Rijndael algorithm, so I glanced quickly through the FIPS document to see if they changed the algorithm. It looks at first glance to be exactly Rijndael, with one minor reduction in generality: The blocksize is fixed to be 128-bits, rather than the variable length block (128, 192, or 256 bits) in the original Rijndael spec. That doesn't seem to be a particularly important change (128 bits is more than enough).
:-)
Now of course, you can still be paranoid if you like, and here's a suggestion if you need one: maybe that particular algorithm was selected from the 5 finalists because the NSA could break it.
Probably not likely (in retrospect, DES turned out to be much stronger than suspected), but you can cling to that if you need some conspiracy theories!