I think that these days, with any enormous market drop, they loosen the money supply quite a bit to make sure we don't repeat the failed policies leading to the Great Depression.
In the Great Depression, the government tightened the money supply and dried up credit. When companies and individuals couldn't borrow the money to pay their creditors, they went out of business. When banks needed additional capital, they couldn't get it.
From what I understand, there is only one major U.S. city where there were no bank failures -- Houston. The bankers in Houston helped prop each other up. When one bank saw a run on their deposits, the other banks stepped in and helped. Consequently, public concern quickly eased and the banks stayed in business.
Now if I can only quit referring to George Bush, President of the United States and former Governor of Texas by calling him "George Bush, President of the United State and former Governor of Texas".
Oops. There I go again.
Let's try it again but in a roundabout way. How do I refer to his wife? Laura Bush, wife of George Bush, President of the United States and former Governor of Texas.
Hmmmm.
Maybe it's time for a brain transplant. Do you have any I can borrow?
I refuse to give them a bank account number. All it takes is one crooked employee to really do you in.
I did ask a VP at the local bank about the possibility of opening up a bank account with $1 in it for the sole purpose of providing that number to PayPal.
Thus, my account remains open with my credit card info on their servers.
If you used my approach, that wouldn't be a worry.
They want a credit card number -- that's fine. I give them a one-time ShopSafe credit card number from MBNA with a maximum limit of about $25.
When I want to make a purchase, I create and use a new ShopSafe credit card number from MBNA with a limit of two or three bucks more than the value I want to pay.
Using ShopSafe from MBNA, I specify the maximum amount to use on the card and an expiration date of from 2 to 12 months from now. Once used, any future uses until the amount runs down must be from the same place. So if you're using it at a subscription site for on-going subscriptions, they can't go out and use it to buy anything from another merchant.
As far as I'm concerned, it's the only way to go.
Note: I don't work for MBNA or any other credit card company.
I use spamd on OpenBSD to do greylisting. That cuts an enormous amount of spam out.
For those who aren't familiar with greylisting, when an smtp server attempts to deliver an e-mail the from address, to address, and IP address of the sender are put in a database and the mail is refused with a non-permanent error code.
Assuming the smtp server sending the e-mail follows the RFC, it will try again later. When it tries again after at least 20 minutes from the original attempt, it accepts the e-mail and adds the IP address of the source to a whitelist. For the next 30 days, any e-mails from it are white-listed. After that, the server is verified again.
I also keep a seperate white-list for non-RFC compliant servers and for frequent senders. Some servers only try one to three times and quit. Another problem is e-mail from some large e-mail farms may make each attempt to deliver the e-mail from a different server with different IP addresses, so I'll add their e-mail addresses to the white-lists as well.
One method I use for adding IP addresses of selected senders that send a lot of legitimate e-mail to the whitelist is to look up their SPF records and use that to identify the usual e-mail servers for the domain.
A few ISPs appear to put their entire address space in the SPF record. For example, panix.com's SPF record is
panix.com text = "v=spf1 ip4:166.84.0.0/16 ip4:198.7.7.0/24 ?all
Needless to say they don't get whitelisted since I only want to whitelist e-mail servers, not their users spam-zombie computers.
In other words, I use the SPF records to identify legitimate e-mail servers from selected domains only.
Decay is certainly a problem with CDR and CDRW because of the dyes.
It is much less of a problem with factory pressed CDs. When I saw the first CD player under $200, I bought one. That was something like 1985 or so. At the time, the big music stores were pretty much all LPs and tapes. CD selection was very limited. The store nearest my home at the time was in a large mall. Their total area dedicated to CDs was a table about 2 1/2 feet square.
20 years later, even those CDs are still very good.
I have heard of a rare form of decay that does affect factory pressed CDs - some form of fungus that can grow into the CD between the layers.
Years ago, I looked rather wild with a very full beard and hair to my shoulders. And then, of course, the black leather motorcycle jacket didn't hurt either.
Most people just naturally moved out of your way to let you through.
One day after I had one of my nicer haircuts, I was in a bookstore. I guess I looked too presentable because people weren't getting out of my way. Until I realized why, I found myself getting very irritated at them.
Verisign say 99 per cent of sites will be get the "ok" and the address bar left white. Only outfits which fork out for an extended validation SSL will get the psychological filip of "green for go". Firms will have to stump up about 150 per cent of what they currently do for an SSL certificate.
I'm colorblind. Would I ever notice the difference?
I'm quite familiar with the RSA Challenge and that does not change anything I say.
What the RSA Challenge has shown so far is that weaker keys (product of two smaller farms) can be factored faster than stronger keys. The RSA Challenge just goes up to 2048 bit keys and it will likely be quite a while (many years) before they can be factored.
Distributed computing isn't going to make much of a difference. It will, at best, provide a linear improvement in factoring. That has little affect on the problem considering that there are no known polynomial time algorithms available.
But you are correct about human ingenuity. Quantum computing, if and when available, should make the problem quite tractable.
By the way, this all presupposes that you are using a public/private key method and the public key is available. It would be quite possible, for example, using PGP to have a PGP encrypted virtual disk and store the public and private keyrings stored on a removable media kept separate when not actually in use. Then, if someone steals the computer, but not the media with the keyrings, they wouldn't even have the public key to work from. I don't even know that a good quantum computer would be of much help then.
Yes, and as most commonly used encryption schemes from password protecting a file to other methods have encryption that can be broken by readily available programs it's merely a variation on the username/password argument.
You are very mistaken.
Real encryption schemes are not easily broken by any program, readily available or not. You are talking about some serious computation that could take tens or hundreds of years for a large number of state of the art computers working at full capacity to break. And by that time, of course, the original hard drive would have completely quit working.
The point is that whoever ends up with the computer can't access your hard drive and retrieve confidential data.
If someone steals the laptop and can't access the data, all you lost was the laptop, your access to it, and your modifications of the contents (you do have it backed up at the office, don't you)?
If someone steals the laptop and the data is available, you've lost the laptop and your access to it. But you might be able to retrieve your modifications of the contents when they are posted across the Internet for all to see.
Of course, that confidential information may make it into the hands of someone who can use it so you may also lose thye contents of your bank account, find your credit cards charged up, serious damage to your company's image to the public, possibly several millions of dollars in lawsuits, the wages of the people it takes to deal with the situation, etc.
It is, or at least, it should be, a no-brainer if you have any kind of confidential information at all.
In many caes, the laptop MUST contain confidential information that people must have in order to work away from the office.
Requiring someone to provide a username and password is not there for the purpose of protecting the data. It is there to try to keep people from using the laptop without authorization.
Protecting confidential data pretty much requires encryption. You could hire a couple of former Navy Seals to travel with you to guard the laptop and limit the chance of losing it, but encrypting the contents is a whole lot less expensive.
I was talking to someone who works with autistic children just last week.
One thing he told me was that it was his impression that a much higher than expected percentage of autistic children had computer professionals as parents.
Of course, where he lives and works has a higher percentage of computer professionals than usual. I don't know if he took that into account.
When readnotify was mentioned during the hearings, I signed on for a trial account. In the signup page, when it asked where I heard about them, I answered that I heard about them in the Congressional Hearings on Pretexting. One web bug they used in the test messages I tried was a wav file set to play at zero volume. I didn't look at the wav file itself, so I couldn't tell if there was anything malicious in the wav file.
I did the testing from an OpenBSD machine using Sylpheed. It didn't report that I had read the e-mails unless I copied and pasted a link from the e-mail headers to a web browser.
Slashdot Mirror
I like to point out that more people in the U.S. die of drunk driving accidents in any year than died from terrorism in that year.
A math professor of mine once pointed out that more people in the U.S. die each year from eating fast food than die from rabies.
There is some discussion that the whole plan violates the GPL big time.
It makes you wonder whether or not Novell will be in compliance with the GPL. If not, they won't even have the rights to be a Linux vendor.
I think that these days, with any enormous market drop, they loosen the money supply quite a bit to make sure we don't repeat the failed policies leading to the Great Depression.
In the Great Depression, the government tightened the money supply and dried up credit. When companies and individuals couldn't borrow the money to pay their creditors, they went out of business. When banks needed additional capital, they couldn't get it.
From what I understand, there is only one major U.S. city where there were no bank failures -- Houston. The bankers in Houston helped prop each other up. When one bank saw a run on their deposits, the other banks stepped in and helped. Consequently, public concern quickly eased and the banks stayed in business.
What a go, Ron Paul.
For those who don't realize it, Ron Paul ran for President once as the Libertarian Candidate.
Good point.
Now if I can only quit referring to George Bush, President of the United States and former Governor of Texas by calling him "George Bush, President of the United State and former Governor of Texas".
Oops. There I go again.
Let's try it again but in a roundabout way. How do I refer to his wife? Laura Bush, wife of George Bush, President of the United States and former Governor of Texas.
Hmmmm.
Maybe it's time for a brain transplant. Do you have any I can borrow?
I refuse to give them a bank account number. All it takes is one crooked employee to really do you in.
I did ask a VP at the local bank about the possibility of opening up a bank account with $1 in it for the sole purpose of providing that number to PayPal.
If you used my approach, that wouldn't be a worry.
They want a credit card number -- that's fine. I give them a one-time ShopSafe credit card number from MBNA with a maximum limit of about $25.
When I want to make a purchase, I create and use a new ShopSafe credit card number from MBNA with a limit of two or three bucks more than the value I want to pay.
Using ShopSafe from MBNA, I specify the maximum amount to use on the card and an expiration date of from 2 to 12 months from now. Once used, any future uses until the amount runs down must be from the same place. So if you're using it at a subscription site for on-going subscriptions, they can't go out and use it to buy anything from another merchant.
As far as I'm concerned, it's the only way to go.
Note: I don't work for MBNA or any other credit card company.
SPF records can be useful to identify legitimate e-mail servers from selected domains.
I use spamd on OpenBSD to do greylisting. That cuts an enormous amount of spam out.
For those who aren't familiar with greylisting, when an smtp server attempts to deliver an e-mail the from address, to address, and IP address of the sender are put in a database and the mail is refused with a non-permanent error code.
Assuming the smtp server sending the e-mail follows the RFC, it will try again later. When it tries again after at least 20 minutes from the original attempt, it accepts the e-mail and adds the IP address of the source to a whitelist. For the next 30 days, any e-mails from it are white-listed. After that, the server is verified again.
I also keep a seperate white-list for non-RFC compliant servers and for frequent senders. Some servers only try one to three times and quit. Another problem is e-mail from some large e-mail farms may make each attempt to deliver the e-mail from a different server with different IP addresses, so I'll add their e-mail addresses to the white-lists as well.
One method I use for adding IP addresses of selected senders that send a lot of legitimate e-mail to the whitelist is to look up their SPF records and use that to identify the usual e-mail servers for the domain.
A few ISPs appear to put their entire address space in the SPF record. For example, panix.com's SPF record is
Needless to say they don't get whitelisted since I only want to whitelist e-mail servers, not their users spam-zombie computers.
In other words, I use the SPF records to identify legitimate e-mail servers from selected domains only.
Ever heard of the Hotard Janitor?
I've wondered why people don't just hang cloth diapers on the yard fence and rince them off thoroughly with a water hose.
Your neighbor's garden would probably grow better, too.
Decay is certainly a problem with CDR and CDRW because of the dyes.
It is much less of a problem with factory pressed CDs. When I saw the first CD player under $200, I bought one. That was something like 1985 or so. At the time, the big music stores were pretty much all LPs and tapes. CD selection was very limited. The store nearest my home at the time was in a large mall. Their total area dedicated to CDs was a table about 2 1/2 feet square.
20 years later, even those CDs are still very good.
I have heard of a rare form of decay that does affect factory pressed CDs - some form of fungus that can grow into the CD between the layers.
That's what I use as well (along with shaving soap in a mug applied with a brush).
The blades are usually cheap, they last much longer, and they do as good a job as anything else.
I've been tempted to switch to a straight razor.
Years ago, I looked rather wild with a very full beard and hair to my shoulders. And then, of course, the black leather motorcycle jacket didn't hurt either.
Most people just naturally moved out of your way to let you through.
One day after I had one of my nicer haircuts, I was in a bookstore. I guess I looked too presentable because people weren't getting out of my way. Until I realized why, I found myself getting very irritated at them.
I prefer shaving soap in a mug applied with a brush.
I'm colorblind. Would I ever notice the difference?
Norfolk Island looks like a good place to live.
Not too sure how to get permission to move there, though.
I know someone who actually did move there.
According to him, a few months after he arrived, the government emptied out his bank account and he's been trying to get it back ever since.
I'm quite familiar with the RSA Challenge and that does not change anything I say.
What the RSA Challenge has shown so far is that weaker keys (product of two smaller farms) can be factored faster than stronger keys. The RSA Challenge just goes up to 2048 bit keys and it will likely be quite a while (many years) before they can be factored.
Distributed computing isn't going to make much of a difference. It will, at best, provide a linear improvement in factoring. That has little affect on the problem considering that there are no known polynomial time algorithms available.
But you are correct about human ingenuity. Quantum computing, if and when available, should make the problem quite tractable.
By the way, this all presupposes that you are using a public/private key method and the public key is available. It would be quite possible, for example, using PGP to have a PGP encrypted virtual disk and store the public and private keyrings stored on a removable media kept separate when not actually in use. Then, if someone steals the computer, but not the media with the keyrings, they wouldn't even have the public key to work from. I don't even know that a good quantum computer would be of much help then.
No.
You are very mistaken.
Real encryption schemes are not easily broken by any program, readily available or not. You are talking about some serious computation that could take tens or hundreds of years for a large number of state of the art computers working at full capacity to break. And by that time, of course, the original hard drive would have completely quit working.
The point is that whoever ends up with the computer can't access your hard drive and retrieve confidential data.
If someone steals the laptop and can't access the data, all you lost was the laptop, your access to it, and your modifications of the contents (you do have it backed up at the office, don't you)?
If someone steals the laptop and the data is available, you've lost the laptop and your access to it. But you might be able to retrieve your modifications of the contents when they are posted across the Internet for all to see.
Of course, that confidential information may make it into the hands of someone who can use it so you may also lose thye contents of your bank account, find your credit cards charged up, serious damage to your company's image to the public, possibly several millions of dollars in lawsuits, the wages of the people it takes to deal with the situation, etc.
It is, or at least, it should be, a no-brainer if you have any kind of confidential information at all.
In many caes, the laptop MUST contain confidential information that people must have in order to work away from the office.
Requiring someone to provide a username and password is not there for the purpose of protecting the data. It is there to try to keep people from using the laptop without authorization.
Protecting confidential data pretty much requires encryption. You could hire a couple of former Navy Seals to travel with you to guard the laptop and limit the chance of losing it, but encrypting the contents is a whole lot less expensive.
You might have a point if the summary answered its own question.
It provided some usual answers, but left plenty of room for debate.
I was talking to someone who works with autistic children just last week.
One thing he told me was that it was his impression that a much higher than expected percentage of autistic children had computer professionals as parents.
Of course, where he lives and works has a higher percentage of computer professionals than usual. I don't know if he took that into account.
It doesn't have to be just graphics.
When readnotify was mentioned during the hearings, I signed on for a trial account. In the signup page, when it asked where I heard about them, I answered that I heard about them in the Congressional Hearings on Pretexting. One web bug they used in the test messages I tried was a wav file set to play at zero volume. I didn't look at the wav file itself, so I couldn't tell if there was anything malicious in the wav file.
I did the testing from an OpenBSD machine using Sylpheed. It didn't report that I had read the e-mails unless I copied and pasted a link from the e-mail headers to a web browser.