SCO claims to have provided IBM with 1 million pages of documentation in response to IBM's motion to compel discovery. I have read every single page. The first 999,999 pages said
The theory is that SCO can't complain about somebody distributing these hashes because you can't get the source code from it. The problem I see with the MD5 approach is that it is equivalent to SCO coming right out and saying "the matching code is lines 153-287 of the xxxxx.c file" -- they've already indicated that they are (for whatever reason) unwilling to simply identify the "infringing" code. It would be nice if someone within SCO anonymously leaked the information, but I think we're less likely to get the necessary checksums than the second coming of Jesus.
Biggest hurdles to actually building one...
on
The Space Elevator
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· Score: 1
As mentioned in the review, the strength of currently manufactured carbon nanotubes is, so far, grossly inadequate. It's theoretically possible for nanotubes to handle the required load, but WHEN can we actually manufacture them with the requisite strength?
But the even BIGGER hurdle to overcome is the LENGTH of the nanotubes. The longest we can manufacture currently are less than a couple CENTImeters, and this project will require nanotubes of thousands of KILOmeters in length. Even allowing for some sort of Moore's Law effect, and something to reduce the cost to within a reasonable range, it may take more than 100 years to develop the capability to make the nanotubes required.
So don't be fooled by the "10 years + $6 billion" estimate. It's doubtful we'll even be capable of building one of these in this century.
Taking an existing instruction set and removing stuff from it isn't exactly creative...
It may not be "creative", but I'm sure there are lots of people happy to use OpenOffice, even though it has only taken an existing file format and removed some features (bloat).
Nope. On the subject of Nintendo, however... I don't know about the Game Boy, but the original Nintendo box used the 6502 and the SuperNES used the 65816, I believe. The 65816 was the 16-bit derivative of the 6502.
That's stretching the meaning of the term "near" -- it's still a few day's trekking from Everest Base Camp. But damn, they sure have good apple pie (and no more expensive than what you'd pay at Applebee's or similar)!
A few years ago I worked on a military messaging system and used some of the source code from Schneier's Applied Cryptography to implement the key exchange, among other things. Everything worked great for us, but not long after it got into the field, we kept having sites come up with errors establishing connections.
The code included a function specifically for a_times_b_mod_c using arbitrarily large numbers, and we used this function in the interest of speed. Unfortunately, there was a bug which caused the function to return a 0 result a little more often than expected (with C being "almost certainly" prime, it should almost never return a 0).
Fortunately, though, a 0 caused an error, rather than an insecure connection. When we got rid of the special function and instead used the overloaded * and % operators, everything worked fine.
I know there must have been more than a few eyeballs looking at the code in that function -- including mine -- but a potentially devastating bug snuck through. Heck, I didn't have a clue how that code was supposed to work. It was too mathematically complex for me.
The moral of the story? I suppose it's just this: the "many eyeballs" theory quickly breaks down in the face of esoteric algorithms.
If AT&T Wireless is supposed to be the best in the US, I can understand why SMS is hardly used. Back when I switched to AT&T about a year ago, I thought text messages might be useful. Then I found that my messages never arrived (everyone else I knew was with a different provider).
Finally, I found someone else with AT&T, and then only 1/4 of my messages never arrived. Woo-hoo. The really annoying bit was when I would get replies back hours after they were sent. Or someone would take the trouble to go to AT&T's web site to enter a message for me and it would either never arrive or arrive hours later...
And they wanted $.10 per message? Ridiculous! I might as well write the messages on dimes and throw them into the Missouri river, hoping they'll get where I want them to go.
I have tons of extra minutes (nights/weekends) -- Why can't these %*(@! providers just charge 1/2 minute or so per message?!
As a tip for best results I suggeest using the Extreme Documentation method when writing your docs, it's saved time on the order of Olog(n) for me and a proven time saving technique.
Define your function "Olog", please. Surely Mr. "Wagner LLC Consulting Co. - Getting it right the first time" couldn't have meant O(log n)...:)
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The theory is that SCO can't complain about somebody distributing these hashes because you can't get the source code from it.
The problem I see with the MD5 approach is that it is equivalent to SCO coming right out and saying "the matching code is lines 153-287 of the xxxxx.c file" -- they've already indicated that they are (for whatever reason) unwilling to simply identify the "infringing" code. It would be nice if someone within SCO anonymously leaked the information, but I think we're less likely to get the necessary checksums than the second coming of Jesus.
As mentioned in the review, the strength of currently manufactured carbon nanotubes is, so far, grossly inadequate. It's theoretically possible for nanotubes to handle the required load, but WHEN can we actually manufacture them with the requisite strength?
But the even BIGGER hurdle to overcome is the LENGTH of the nanotubes. The longest we can manufacture currently are less than a couple CENTImeters, and this project will require nanotubes of thousands of KILOmeters in length. Even allowing for some sort of Moore's Law effect, and something to reduce the cost to within a reasonable range, it may take more than 100 years to develop the capability to make the nanotubes required.
So don't be fooled by the "10 years + $6 billion" estimate. It's doubtful we'll even be capable of building one of these in this century.
Taking an existing instruction set and removing stuff from it isn't exactly creative... It may not be "creative", but I'm sure there are lots of people happy to use OpenOffice, even though it has only taken an existing file format and removed some features (bloat).
Nope. On the subject of Nintendo, however... I don't know about the Game Boy, but the original Nintendo box used the 6502 and the SuperNES used the 65816, I believe. The 65816 was the 16-bit derivative of the 6502.
That's stretching the meaning of the term "near" -- it's still a few day's trekking from Everest Base Camp. But damn, they sure have good apple pie (and no more expensive than what you'd pay at Applebee's or similar)!
The Z-80 dates back from more than 15 years ago, right? We still use them in some of our products. But I'm not going to tell you where I work...
The code included a function specifically for a_times_b_mod_c using arbitrarily large numbers, and we used this function in the interest of speed. Unfortunately, there was a bug which caused the function to return a 0 result a little more often than expected (with C being "almost certainly" prime, it should almost never return a 0).
Fortunately, though, a 0 caused an error, rather than an insecure connection. When we got rid of the special function and instead used the overloaded * and % operators, everything worked fine.
I know there must have been more than a few eyeballs looking at the code in that function -- including mine -- but a potentially devastating bug snuck through. Heck, I didn't have a clue how that code was supposed to work. It was too mathematically complex for me.
The moral of the story? I suppose it's just this: the "many eyeballs" theory quickly breaks down in the face of esoteric algorithms.
Finally, I found someone else with AT&T, and then only 1/4 of my messages never arrived. Woo-hoo. The really annoying bit was when I would get replies back hours after they were sent. Or someone would take the trouble to go to AT&T's web site to enter a message for me and it would either never arrive or arrive hours later...
And they wanted $.10 per message? Ridiculous! I might as well write the messages on dimes and throw them into the Missouri river, hoping they'll get where I want them to go.
I have tons of extra minutes (nights/weekends) -- Why can't these %*(@! providers just charge 1/2 minute or so per message?!
Define your function "Olog", please. Surely Mr. "Wagner LLC Consulting Co. - Getting it right the first time" couldn't have meant O(log n)... :)
...how many cupholders do I get for that $500K? I only saw two in the picture.