Not only that but this new movie does not have Ally Sheedy in it, who having played Jennifer Mack in War Games and roles in The Breakfast Club and St. Elmo's Fire is surely the ultimate fantasy girlfriend for the average hacker.
This is simply the worst piece of FUD concerning Linux and OSS in general that I've ever read. And it's coming from the "Executive Editor" who should have taken a look for some actual examples of what he's talking about. The entire article is random speculation that "bad things can happen" with OSS because people can modify the source and he should be ashamed of having written it: unless of course he's being paid to write propaganda.
During a week when Microsoft admits it sat on the worst flaw ever for 6 months, and MyDoom and friends are rampaging around it's shameful to see an article written with so much fear and so little substance. He even manages to say that OSS might be used by terrorists against the US (although he doesn't use the word).
Although this device might be using "Open Source" software the actual software in the device isn't open. No doubt they obtained commercial licenses from Sleepycat and others so that they could get around having to release their software. Which is a pity because it makes customizing the thing so much harder.
When is this stupid argument going to die? It's now totally pointless to try to force the definition of hacker to be someone who writes code and cracker to be what the mass media calls a hacker. Languages are living things and just because Eric Raymond would like to define hacker as it was at one point in time is irrelevant to current usage. Even conferences like H2K are more about hacking in the cracking sense than hacking.
This is similar to trying to argue that the word gay is not associated with homosexual men now; it's time to get over the old definitions of words (particularly slang words) and move on.
Otherwise we'd all be walking around using the word ace to describe things that are currently considered phat.
(Philet0ast3r is an online handle; he didn't want me to use his name.)
Really? I mean I could have sworn that Philet0ast3r was a real name. Are you sure he isn't the son of the l33t3st parents in Europe: C4ptainKaos and S3xyH3xy?
The SpamAssassin test corpus has a collection of labelled ham and spam that's quite handy. Perhaps start with that.
I'm thinking about doing a paper for the April spam conference about a variety of attacks on Bayesian filters. Perhaps we should be considering doing a joint presentation since this interests you?
Perhaps email me directly if you want to talk more.
Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun.
Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-two million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.
The reason watches with moving hands are so successful is that same reason that even in modern glass cockpit aircraft the "old style" mechanical displays are rendered on screen: they are extremely fast and easy to read. The actual guts of the watch are irrelevant (purely mechanical all the way to purely electronic), but the display is the thing you are going to interact with every day.
And an important aspect of moving hands is that they convey information in their movement: in a cockpit the altimeter can be "read" very quickly to show whether the aircraft is ascending or descending. On a watch I can get an approximate time (it's almost 4:30pm) in a glance. Yet another example is a digital vs. analog scuba diving pressure gauge: the position of the mechanical arm can be understood very fast without worrying about the exact number of PSI left.
How about writing this up, perhaps with more experiments and submit it to the Spam Conference? I'm sure others there would be interested in hearing about your proposal.
I did not constrain the words at all. I used the word list in/usr/share/dict/words in my Linux laptop.
One of the defenses against the trickery I mentioned is to look at groups of words (as you suggest) since real mail will have meaningful relationships between words.
How exactly is attacking me going to help? Unless you yourself are a spammer? Since I make a living working on anti-spam and released POPFile for free I can't see how attacking me is going to make the spam problem any better.
Perhaps you didn't read the article: I am not a spammer, I work for a company that makes anti-spam software.
Not only did I send myself 10,000 spams, I bought these incredible enlarger pills from myself for three easy payments of $9.95 and I now have a monster in my pants:-)
Yes, that's a constant problem for me (and anyone else named Cumming or Cummings in the world). For example I can't get a Hotmail email account because of my name, but I did manage to sign up an account using the name Ivana Watch-Teens-Give-Head:-)
Remember they had three redudant rovers (Spirit, Opportunity and Beagle 2). In the big scheme of things Beagle 2 took one for the team, stiff upper lip and all that. However, I can reveal that despite Beagle 2's problems contact was recently reestablished as follows:
Jodrell Bank: I command you, as King of the Britons, to move! Beagle 2: I move for no man. Jodrell Bank: Report damage! Beagle 2: 'Tis but a scratch. Jodrell Bank: A scratch? Your wheels are off! Beagle 2: No, they're not Jodrell Bank: Well, what's that pile of molten slag? Beagle 2: I've had worse. Jodrell Bank: Eh. You are indeed brave, Sir Beagle, but you are no longer operational Beagle 2: Oh, had enough, eh? Jodrell Bank: Look, you stupid bastard. You impacted the surface of Mars at high speed, your camera's broken and you've got no wheels Beagle 2: Yes I have. Jodrell Bank: Look! Beagle 2: Just a flesh wound.
Although the spelling and grammar are rather old fashioned, no doubt spammers will take inspiration from the text for the latest attempts to get around filters.
I can see it coming to an inbox near you soon:
"Is thyne mans penys lyttel? Than thou hast by myne oyntments"
Because we had a tie and decided that rather than be mean we'd be generous and give four.
In general we'll be sticking as closely as possible to the charter and you'll see one to three per quarter, but hey, there were four great project and the Collegium had a tie.
I'm sympathetic to the idea behind this article, but does it deserve a place on/.? There's absolutely no empirical data, or even a reasonable example given in the document. The author is talking about IPv6 and Perl6 both of which are unknown quantities at this point.
He's right that just throwing away old code means yo u lose a lot of valuable bug fixes, on the other hand if you look at some code and realize there is a better way then the solution is to rewrite it.
Of course you can have it both ways. What you do is write an automated test case for every bug that you fix in your code. When you write the new version it has to pass the old test suite, then you've got new code and all the experience from the old code.
You know when I was a lad you could trust a policeman to get you to the church on time, but seems that now even 69 year old actors like Carmine Caridi can't be trusted not to digitize and upload screeners they get sent to the Internet.
These geriatric hooligans are ruining the Internet for the rest of us. The problem is they've got time on their hands, they retire and if they're not out on the streets selling drugs, they're at home violating copyrights on Kazaa.
Have they no shame!
I say bring back compulsory military service for the over 60s. They need a dose of good-old military discipline to whip them into shape. And if that doesn't work then cut off their supply of Tums.
Harsh I know, but it's the only language that they understand.
> Boys play with traditional toys up until the age > of eight or 10, and it is in the zero to seven age > range that Lego has its niche.' Zero to seven? > What about the Slashdot crowd?
Perhaps he was talking mental age?:-)
Seriously though a key trait of the hacker mindset is, I think, playfulness. That shows up in the way hackers mess around with language and Lego. And that playfulness is a key aspect of learning. How many times have you hacked something together "just for the fun of it": in reality half the fun was that you were learning.
The good news is that Lego is going back to the bricks. Great news Lego, that's just what we all needed!
Slashdot Mirror
Not only that but this new movie does not have Ally Sheedy in it, who having played Jennifer Mack in War Games and roles in The Breakfast Club and St. Elmo's Fire is surely the ultimate fantasy girlfriend for the average hacker.
OK, at least *this* average hacker.
John.
This is simply the worst piece of FUD concerning Linux and OSS in general that I've ever read. And it's coming from the "Executive Editor" who should have taken a look for some actual examples of what he's talking about. The entire article is random speculation that "bad things can happen" with OSS because people can modify the source and he should be ashamed of having written it: unless of course he's being paid to write propaganda.
During a week when Microsoft admits it sat on the worst flaw ever for 6 months, and MyDoom and friends are rampaging around it's shameful to see an article written with so much fear and so little substance. He even manages to say that OSS might be used by terrorists against the US (although he doesn't use the word).
An absolutely disgusting piece of "journalism".
John.
What like the Open Source Awards?
BitTorrent has not yet been nominated.
John.
1. Tag the rich
2. Track their locations
3. Take incriminating paparazzi pictures
4. ????
5. Profit!
John.
Although this device might be using "Open Source" software the actual software in the device isn't open. No doubt they obtained commercial licenses from Sleepycat and others so that they could get around having to release their software. Which is a pity because it makes customizing the thing so much harder.
John.
When is this stupid argument going to die? It's now totally pointless to try to force the definition of hacker to be someone who writes code and cracker to be what the mass media calls a hacker. Languages are living things and just because Eric Raymond would like to define hacker as it was at one point in time is irrelevant to current usage. Even conferences like H2K are more about hacking in the cracking sense than hacking.
This is similar to trying to argue that the word gay is not associated with homosexual men now; it's time to get over the old definitions of words (particularly slang words) and move on.
Otherwise we'd all be walking around using the word ace to describe things that are currently considered phat.
John.
(Philet0ast3r is an online handle; he didn't want me to use his name.)
Really? I mean I could have sworn that Philet0ast3r was a real name. Are you sure he isn't the son of the l33t3st parents in Europe: C4ptainKaos and S3xyH3xy?
John.
The SpamAssassin test corpus has a collection of labelled ham and spam that's quite handy. Perhaps start with that.
I'm thinking about doing a paper for the April spam conference about a variety of attacks on Bayesian filters. Perhaps we should be considering doing a joint presentation since this interests you?
Perhaps email me directly if you want to talk more.
John.
And an important aspect of moving hands is that they convey information in their movement: in a cockpit the altimeter can be "read" very quickly to show whether the aircraft is ascending or descending. On a watch I can get an approximate time (it's almost 4:30pm) in a glance. Yet another example is a digital vs. analog scuba diving pressure gauge: the position of the mechanical arm can be understood very fast without worrying about the exact number of PSI left.
John.
How about writing this up, perhaps with more experiments and submit it to the Spam Conference? I'm sure others there would be interested in hearing about your proposal.
John.
I did not constrain the words at all. I used the word list in /usr/share/dict/words in my Linux laptop.
One of the defenses against the trickery I mentioned is to look at groups of words (as you suggest) since real mail will have meaningful relationships between words.
John.
How exactly is attacking me going to help? Unless you yourself are a spammer? Since I make a living working on anti-spam and released POPFile for free I can't see how attacking me is going to make the spam problem any better.
Perhaps you didn't read the article: I am not a spammer, I work for a company that makes anti-spam software.
John.
Not only did I send myself 10,000 spams, I bought these incredible enlarger pills from myself for three easy payments of $9.95 and I now have a monster in my pants :-)
John.
If people working in anti-spam don't try to break their own filters the spammers will do it for them and we'll be worse off.
There's a direct analogy with cryptographic techniques where breaking them is most of the work... that way we know that they are secure.
John.
Yes, that's a constant problem for me (and anyone else named Cumming or Cummings in the world). For example I can't get a Hotmail email account because of my name, but I did manage to sign up an account using the name Ivana Watch-Teens-Give-Head :-)
John.
Remember they had three redudant rovers (Spirit, Opportunity and Beagle 2). In the big scheme of things Beagle 2 took one for the team, stiff upper lip and all that. However, I can reveal that despite Beagle 2's problems contact was recently reestablished as follows:
Jodrell Bank: I command you, as King of the Britons, to move!
Beagle 2: I move for no man.
Jodrell Bank: Report damage!
Beagle 2: 'Tis but a scratch.
Jodrell Bank: A scratch? Your wheels are off!
Beagle 2: No, they're not
Jodrell Bank: Well, what's that pile of molten slag?
Beagle 2: I've had worse.
Jodrell Bank: Eh. You are indeed brave, Sir Beagle, but you are no longer operational
Beagle 2: Oh, had enough, eh?
Jodrell Bank: Look, you stupid bastard. You impacted the surface of Mars at high speed, your camera's broken and you've got no wheels
Beagle 2: Yes I have.
Jodrell Bank: Look!
Beagle 2: Just a flesh wound.
John.
Although the spelling and grammar are rather old fashioned, no doubt spammers will take inspiration from the text for the latest attempts to get around filters.
I can see it coming to an inbox near you soon:
"Is thyne mans penys lyttel? Than thou hast by myne oyntments"
John.
Because we had a tie and decided that rather than be mean we'd be generous and give four.
In general we'll be sticking as closely as possible to the charter and you'll see one to three per quarter, but hey, there were four great project and the Collegium had a tie.
John.
I'm sympathetic to the idea behind this article, but does it deserve a place on /.? There's absolutely no empirical data, or even a reasonable example given in the document. The author is talking about IPv6 and Perl6 both of which are unknown quantities at this point.
He's right that just throwing away old code means yo u lose a lot of valuable bug fixes, on the other hand if you look at some code and realize there is a better way then the solution is to rewrite it.
Of course you can have it both ways. What you do is write an automated test case for every bug that you fix in your code. When you write the new version it has to pass the old test suite, then you've got new code and all the experience from the old code.
John.
> Only people who are able to be online more then /.ers are probally pr0n addicts.
>
Damn, my secret is out.
John.
That's more like my daily Internet use :-)
/.er is in?
I wonder what percentile the average
John.
Weird. I am talking about this at the MIT Spam Conference on Friday and on a technique that can break a Bayesian spam filter.
John.
You know when I was a lad you could trust a policeman to get you to the church on time, but seems that now even 69 year old actors like Carmine Caridi can't be trusted not to digitize and upload screeners they get sent to the Internet.
These geriatric hooligans are ruining the Internet for the rest of us. The problem is they've got time on their hands, they retire and if they're not out on the streets selling drugs, they're at home violating copyrights on Kazaa.
Have they no shame!
I say bring back compulsory military service for the over 60s. They need a dose of good-old military discipline to whip them into shape. And if that doesn't work then cut off their supply of Tums.
Harsh I know, but it's the only language that they understand.
John.
> Boys play with traditional toys up until the age
:-)
> of eight or 10, and it is in the zero to seven age
> range that Lego has its niche.' Zero to seven?
> What about the Slashdot crowd?
Perhaps he was talking mental age?
Seriously though a key trait of the hacker mindset is, I think, playfulness. That shows up in the way hackers mess around with language and Lego. And that playfulness is a key aspect of learning. How many times have you hacked something together "just for the fun of it": in reality half the fun was that you were learning.
The good news is that Lego is going back to the bricks. Great news Lego, that's just what we all needed!
John.
IAAPN (I Am A Punctuation Nazi): the headline should read "Microsoft Word Forms' Passwords Cracked" or "Microsoft Word Forms's Passwords Cracked".
John.