AKs and atom bombs didn't come out of thin air; they are the result of thousands upon thousands of years of human beings coming up with progressively more efficient ways of killing each other. Sure, and there's nothing unusual about that. Natural selection places the same driving force on every predator.
We had to start somewhere: fists, rocks, sticks, etc. Think, even, of the examples of genocide recorded in the Bible. They didn't have advanced technology or the ability to kill quickly and without thinking. No, but they did have the ability to commit genocide. Even back then, humans had swords, horses, fire, and other weapons of war, which are far more effective at killing than a lion's jaws. Moreover, every lion has similar weaponry, whilst even back in the bronze age the effective fighting capacity of humans differed greatly. A soldier in armour with a sword and shield was considerably more effective than an unarmed peasant. Moreover, when humans form armies, their fighting capability becomes ever magnified.
Many animals in nature resort to displays of strength and posturing, largely because of necessity. Even if an animal is the strongest around, fighting others of its species is a large risk - they could get in a lucky hit, or wound the champion enough for others to take it down. Human weaponry shifts the balance, and makes it more logical to kill your enemy than leave him alive to bother you in future. A one-on-one fight between two humans with weapons, even primitive ones, can be measured in seconds. The human body stands up very poorly to sharp metal, so the outcome of a duel is often binary - one dies, one is unhurt.
Rather, they just fucking lost their minds and kept killing. I've never seen or heard of lions engaging in this kind of behavior. It is not uncommon for new alpha males to kill and eat the cubs of the former alpha. Lions have no problem slaughtering their rivals - they just aren't as capable as humans.
A human being is an extremely effective killing machine, who comes from a long line of ancestors successful enough to pass on their genes. Only relatively recently in the history of our species has the necessity of violence waned. Quite frankly, I'm amazed at how peaceful we are considering our capabilities. In general, we show incredible restraint and compassion, and have an extraordinary sense of modesty when it comes to our achievements as a species.
Predators prey upon other creatures for food. I'm not saying that it's impossible for a lion to kill a smaller creature just for the hell of it (or to hone their abilities further), but I feel that the comparison you're drawing doesn't fit. Never in the history of the world have we observed lions massacring lions by the millions or lions snapping one day and taking out 30 other lions before taking their own life. It simply doesn't happen. I don't think that's a very good example, because lions lack the physical capabilities for mass killing. A single lion could not kill 30 others even if it's mind did snap. Humans, on the other hand, have an extremely large capacity for offense that far outstrips their capability to defend. Killing 30 or more people is not a difficult task for any reasonably intelligent person, so long as they don't care about the consequences.
Out of the entire desktop market, 95% uses Windows and a negligible percentage uses Linux. BMW has a small market share compared to Ford. That doesn't mean that BMW makes worse vehicles.
The desktop market is less concerned about technical excellence, and more concerned with compatibility with established software.
Apparently, Linux doesn't handle the midrange very well. Web servers also fall into the middle range, and Linux has a significant market share there.
If you want fair comparison, you should be cramming a full blown GNU/Linux into that 19Mhz or CPU and 8M of RAM, not just the Linux kernel. Maybe Damn Small Linux or similar. According to this article, they'd even managed to stuff X Window on the watch as well.
There's also picotux, which crams Linux, Busybox and a webserver all in 8M of RAM and 55MHz of processor.
The source code for the EEE is available here. You will need some grasp of Chinese but I dare say the zip files are pretty obvious to anyone. I believe the original complaint was that the zip file supplied by ASUS didn't contain all the required source code. Have you checked the zip to make sure that it now contains everything?
What is this contrast he speaks of? Last time I checked, Windows was used in all these areas too... Out of the 500 top supercomputers, 6 use Windows, and 426 use Linux. Windows doesn't even show up in the top 100.
I haven't been able to find information on the smallest Windows CE system, but Linux has been stuffed on a wristwatch with only 19MHz of CPU power and 8M of RAM.
So I guess Linus' point is that Linux runs a greater range of systems, from the top supercomputers in the world (the top ten all run Linux), to the very smallest of devices. Windows doesn't scale quite as well.
It's the only way to stop this disturbing trend where a whole generation is growing up believing that the only things with value are physical items. Leaving aside all other arguments, I don't think this can be prevented. Increases in bandwidth and storage space make it easier to share information, and consequently, more difficult to limit the spread of information. This trend shows no signs of slowing, and so I can't see copyright infringement becoming any less prolific.
Scarcity is a necessary economic principle even for intellectual items, and without it, you won't see anyone interested in producing intellectual works. The open source movement produces plenty of intellectual work without having to resort to artificial scarcity, and I doubt that everyone interested in music or writing is motivated by financial interests alone.
Heads up - governments have large resources. True, and no doubt it would be possible for a large government to monitor or control the majority of the nodes in Tor... but doing so secretly, without anyone even suspecting, when the network is fully open to the public, when anyone can start up a Tor node, when a node can be set up in any country, is much more difficult to believe. It would be like a digital version of the Truman Show - somewhat unlikely!
So the likelihood is that Tor is securely anonymous, even from large government organisations like the NSA.
Re:Tor gives you anonymity
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Spying On Tor
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· Score: 3, Insightful
But without privacy, nothing stops them from looking that that packets contents, and finding out your name and other information. Unless you're really really cunning and - stop me if I'm going too fast for you - don't send out your name in plaintext when trying to stay anonymous!
Tor isn't a single computer; it's an international network of servers set up by volunteers. In order to effectively correlate traffic information you'd have to have the capability to monitor a large majority of nodes in the network.
Screenshots are important for superficial people like me:)
I like the widget and window theme, but the kicker replacement at the bottom looks pretty tacky. It was the same in beta, and I'd hoped they'd change it for release, but it seems like they're sticking with it.
Tor gives you anonymity
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Spying On Tor
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· Score: 5, Informative
Tor gives you pretty robust anonymity, it just doesn't provide privacy.
How does a SSL MITM attack work?
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Spying On Tor
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· Score: 3, Insightful
I can't quite see how a SSL MITM attack works. Wouldn't the SSL certificate have to be registered for use with a specific domain? Could anyone explain how this would work?
Are you sure you haven't been looking at Satan's code? He wrote a lot of user-space code after God finished his work on the kernel. Satan's just an errant daemon process:P
Documentation? Haven't you heard of the Bible? Meh, that's just the user's manual, and it's not exactly a good example of clear and precise technical writing.
We've been given a Manual, because we're the Users, not the programmers. Clearly you don't subscribe to the ideals of the free software movement, sir! Besides which, have you seen the number of bugs in the system? Shocking!
And don't let me get started on how many errors crop up in Homo Sapiens that we regularly have to patch. It would be a lot easier if the programmer would just provide some docs.
Science can't even tell you WHY different numbers of protons create liquids, gases, and solids--it just says that "at X temp, Y element is in state Z." I suspect we'll find a comment to explain that:
/* Horrible hack to get it working, but I'm sure as hell not going to work Sunday to fix it */ #define PROTON_MASS 1.00727646688
Who did this programming? God. And the crazy thing is that beehives are only one tiny part of it. The overall program encompasses the entire universe. So ha ha ha... cuz you can study those bees all day long and it won't make you a better web programmer. I'll say. This God character has put together something pretty impressive in only a week, but it's all indecipherable spaghetti code. Where are the comments? The well-named functions? The bloody documentation? We're stuck with this system, and working out what the hell is does is pretty much a full time job for millions of experts. You think you've seen bad COBOL systems? Take a look at Universe 1.0; it's got so many quirks and undocumented features that it'll make your head spin just trying to understand what the hell it's doing half the time. I mean, sure, maybe quantum superposition made sense as an optimization feature at the time, but some, any, documentation on it might help!
If they do not need to demonstrate that some random bits are data, finding the random bits is enough to get you thrown into prison. And if they do need to demonstrate the random bits are data, then you can just leave the random bits in the open. I suspect that it's easier to argue:
"I only put 200M of encrypted data on my 2GB USB Drive"
Than:
"I regularly pipe/dev/urandom to/dev/usbdrive"
Most people do not use every last byte of a storage device to store data, so the initial argument is extremely plausible, as it applies to the majority of people. The latter argument is possible, but unlikely, especially if there is other evidence against the suspect.
Corruption? No, neglect. Do you really think that "trust" entity is going to double check everyone who wants to be let in? No, and that's the point of making it distributed. For instance, a default Ubuntu install could trust Canonical, which in turn would trust organisations like the FSF and Mozilla, which in turn would trust certain pieces of software. Organisations that frequently trust untrustworthy software will themselves be trusted less. eBay manages fairly well under a simpler system; sellers try to maximise their reputation because buyers will only trade with those with high reputation. It's essentially a trust economy; a survival of the fittest where organisations that care about security will be rated higher than those who don't.
A good idea in theory, but in practice you know where it leads, right? Companies will come into existance that make it their business to "trust" others, buying their place in the trusted chain of some OS. Assuming a low level of corruption, there would be little financial benefit in doing so. A root organisation would rate other groups with a trust metric, without requiring any money from the groups it rates. The root organisation would be used (and paid) so long as it is objective and trustworthy; a cash-for-trust scandal would not be to it's advantage.
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Many animals in nature resort to displays of strength and posturing, largely because of necessity. Even if an animal is the strongest around, fighting others of its species is a large risk - they could get in a lucky hit, or wound the champion enough for others to take it down. Human weaponry shifts the balance, and makes it more logical to kill your enemy than leave him alive to bother you in future. A one-on-one fight between two humans with weapons, even primitive ones, can be measured in seconds. The human body stands up very poorly to sharp metal, so the outcome of a duel is often binary - one dies, one is unhurt. Rather, they just fucking lost their minds and kept killing. I've never seen or heard of lions engaging in this kind of behavior. It is not uncommon for new alpha males to kill and eat the cubs of the former alpha. Lions have no problem slaughtering their rivals - they just aren't as capable as humans.
A human being is an extremely effective killing machine, who comes from a long line of ancestors successful enough to pass on their genes. Only relatively recently in the history of our species has the necessity of violence waned. Quite frankly, I'm amazed at how peaceful we are considering our capabilities. In general, we show incredible restraint and compassion, and have an extraordinary sense of modesty when it comes to our achievements as a species.
The desktop market is less concerned about technical excellence, and more concerned with compatibility with established software. Apparently, Linux doesn't handle the midrange very well. Web servers also fall into the middle range, and Linux has a significant market share there.
There's also picotux, which crams Linux, Busybox and a webserver all in 8M of RAM and 55MHz of processor.
I haven't been able to find information on the smallest Windows CE system, but Linux has been stuffed on a wristwatch with only 19MHz of CPU power and 8M of RAM.
So I guess Linus' point is that Linux runs a greater range of systems, from the top supercomputers in the world (the top ten all run Linux), to the very smallest of devices. Windows doesn't scale quite as well.
So the likelihood is that Tor is securely anonymous, even from large government organisations like the NSA.
Tor isn't a single computer; it's an international network of servers set up by volunteers. In order to effectively correlate traffic information you'd have to have the capability to monitor a large majority of nodes in the network.
Screenshots are important for superficial people like me :)
I like the widget and window theme, but the kicker replacement at the bottom looks pretty tacky. It was the same in beta, and I'd hoped they'd change it for release, but it seems like they're sticking with it.
Tor gives you pretty robust anonymity, it just doesn't provide privacy.
I can't quite see how a SSL MITM attack works. Wouldn't the SSL certificate have to be registered for use with a specific domain? Could anyone explain how this would work?
And don't let me get started on how many errors crop up in Homo Sapiens that we regularly have to patch. It would be a lot easier if the programmer would just provide some docs. Science can't even tell you WHY different numbers of protons create liquids, gases, and solids--it just says that "at X temp, Y element is in state Z." I suspect we'll find a comment to explain that:
How do you know Mitochondria don't have a common ancestor with cells?
"I only put 200M of encrypted data on my 2GB USB Drive"
Than:
"I regularly pipe
Most people do not use every last byte of a storage device to store data, so the initial argument is extremely plausible, as it applies to the majority of people. The latter argument is possible, but unlikely, especially if there is other evidence against the suspect.
Exacty. The Colossus Mark II is no more real than the so-called "Moon Landing", or the ridiculous fringe theory that the Earth is round.