Now I wonder if they can/do tap into Skype... Fundamentally, this is akin to the DRM issue. Those that want to make calls and talk about anthrax will use modes of communication that aren't monitored and those who pay the penalty are Arab looking Indian dudes... *sigh*...
Skype is a closed network, with a secret protocol. Although the traffic is encrypted, there has been much speculation that backdoors may exist. Indeed, some have been found, although these are bugs and design flaws rather than law enforcement wiretaps. But there is no reason why official wiretaps could not be added at any time. As the source is not open for public review, and each client will execute digitally signed updates, your privacy could be compromised at any time without your knowledge. (Of course, this is also true of any update service that downloads binaries.)
Don't trust closed software with your secrets, whether commercial or personal. You can use a free software VOIP program like Wengo instead, and make it secure using an encrypted VPN (e.g. OpenVPN).
The --show-session-key option looks handy - but in a way, this illustrates the second point I was getting at, which is that information encrypted with GPG can be recovered as long as any recipient can be forced to give up his private key (or run --show-session-key). This is something that any GPG user should bear in mind, particularly as GPG ciphertext will sit in email boxes for many years. You're trusting the recipient to keep his key secret forever: you trust him now and in the future. Whereas if your ciphertext becomes useless shortly after it is sent, you only have to trust the recipient in the present.
I understand that in some countries, you are legally compelled to provide the keys to access files encrypted with PGP, GPG, etc. if the authorities demand access. If you refuse to produce a working key, or claim to be unable to do so, a judge is able to assume that you are deliberately hiding something.
Firstly, I wondered if anyone could confirm this? I have heard that it is the case for Britain at least, although I don't see how it can possibly be legally compatible with the presumption of innocence.
Secondly, I wanted to suggest that perhaps this is a reason not to use PGP, because PGP encrypted information can always be decrypted using the recipient's key - even many years after the message was originally sent. So law enforcement officers will be able to get old PGP-encrypted documents from your email account (probably even if you delete them, thanks to backup tapes). They'll then be able to force you to decrypt them, and if you don't, they can assume you are witholding the key because the files are full of terrorist plans or whatever.
I suggest that people should only use cryptosystems where the session keys are destroyed immediately after use, such as SSH and (possibly) some secure instant messaging services. Even if law enforcement officers use a wiretap to record everything sent by you over an SSH connection, and then seize your computers, they still can't recover the plaintext because the session keys have already been deleted. It's impossible for you, the suspect, to produce the keys, which should help your legal defense. Here's a way to chat securely by SSH.. if you need to transfer files, you can use SFTP.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I've found that writing a Java interface for a C library isn't a trivial undertaking. JNI is a heavyweight solution because translation steps are needed for most variables on the prologue/epilogue of a native call, and because the native library cannot act as a Java object. In contrast, the interface between (say) Python and C is lightweight - you can make a shared library using C that acts the same as a Python module, and when translation steps are required, they are usually simple. Of course JNI might have improved a bit since I last used it, but I remember it was quite painful.
IMO, there has been an intentional design decision to make JNI impractical for general use, so as to encourage pure Java programs. Well, that's understandable - it's all about portability - but there should be a good way to make use of C/C++ libraries from Java, say by compiling them into bytecodes and providing a "virtual" C runtime using Java code.
The department of Homeland Security has been notified. Ownership of Lego's have officially been declared a crime to be prosecuted by the Patriot Act. This support of terrorist activities will not go unchallenged! Only the Feds are allowed to spy on the populace, the populace is not allowed to own these types of things.
It's not just about spying! The evil terrorists might use them to fly bombs into things! Or evil drug dealers might use long-haul UAVs with GPS to smuggle drugs in from South America!
Think of the children! It's a security crisis! If only there were some way to stop people inventing things.
It still seems to me that fundamentalist Christians are potentially just as dangerous as fundamentalist Muslims. Why wouldn't they be? Their religion has the same foundation in the OT, which is a hateful book of intolerance and officially sanctioned genocide if it is taken literally as the revealed word of God. And Christians are more than capable of doing terrible things despite the teachings of Jesus:- the Holocaust, the Crusades, even the invasion of Iraq.
What is special about Muslims that makes them inherently more dangerous than Christians?
I don't think the answer is "Sharia law", because that law could be "ported" to Christianity, and it would fit just as well.
I think what is really needed is a system for setting up secure conversations. Even if they are just text. So if you want to chat to your friends without fear of eavesdropping, you can just do it. Of course, you can do it right now if you and they are crypto geeks - but most people wouldn't know the difference between PGP and SSL.
I think the software requirements are: 1. Must be secure against both criminals and government officials, 2. Must be usable by any computer user - no understanding of crypto required, 3. No software installation required, 4. Key recovery must be impossible, 5. Must be free software (as in GNU).
Now, common VOIP and IM programs do use encryption, but they are not secure against official spying because backdoors are included. For example, MSN Messenger encrypts messages between your computer and the Messenger servers, but the messages are then decrypted on the server side. Clearly, Microsoft could record what you write. MSN Messenger fails requirement 1 (as well as 4 and 5).
There are specialist VOIP, IM and encryption programs that do not have this disadvantage. But few users already have them installed. So they fail requirements 2 and 3. Additionally, PGP software fails requirement 4, because the session keys are stored encrypted in the ciphertext. This means that your private key can be used to unlock the messages in the future. If the government wants to find out what you wrote, they lock you up until you give up your private key.
I do have an idea for a secure messenger that only requires installation on one of the two computers involved in the chat. I think it should be based on the SSH protocol, which meets requirements 1, 4, and 5. However, perhaps someone else can suggest suitable software that meets these requirements?
Your hard disk may already contain "back doors" in the form of hidden sectors and undocumented features for accessing them. These may already be being used for forensic recovery. Their purpose may not be sinister: they may exist simply so that damaged areas of the disk can be transparently remapped. But it's just another reason why you can never be sure that a piece of data has been deleted from your disk, unless you physically destroy it.
I wonder where Richard M. Stallman gets his disks from? I don't know of any HDD vendors that provide the source code for the drive firmware.
There are plenty of technologies that could be seen as evil, and pervasive surveillance is an obvious candidate.
Think about the software that controls weapons, e.g. missiles. Written by people just like you. How do they justify making software that is intended to kill people? Well, they tell themselves that it will only be used when necessary. The contract isn't with the "War Ministry", it's with the "Department of Defence". So that's all right then. The missiles aren't inherently evil, they just enable evil, and the DoD promises to only use them for good.
Think again about DRM software and TCPA. I bet every techie knows what the FSF and EFF say about DRM and TCPA. But still these things have been designed and implemented by people just like you. How many worked on Vista? None of them thought they were working on "evil technology". DRM and TCPA are just features. There's nothing about them that says they have to be used for evil. They just enable evil. And evil isn't mentioned in the business plan.
It's the same with mega population databases and pervasive surveillance. Sure, it could be used for evil. Yes, that's the most likely scenario. But it's just technology. It's not inherently bad or good. And the politicians say it will be used for good, e.g. catching terrorists. People just like you will design it, implement it, and probably only begin to regret their actions a decade later.
Those who live clean honest lives are very difficult to blackmail. Perhaps those don't go into politics much however.
I think that "clean honest people" are extremely rare. Even if you do stick to the ten commandments you will end up being guilty of something. There are a lot of laws, and beyond laws, there are a lot of things that are not illegal but would nevertheless kill a political career if exposed. It is basically impossible to live a life that is completely free of sin, because if you look far enough, anything might be a sin. Jesus once said something to this effect: no one is perfect, but you get points for trying.
Abraham Lincoln once said that men with no vices seldom have any virtues. I think we have to acknowledge that politicians are regular people and probably have all sorts of vices. I don't want those vices to be covered up, because that means blackmail. I want them to be acknowledged as part of the package. I want people to accept that no politician will be perfect. Because in the end it's better to have a President that cheats on his wife than a President that starts wars and kills people.
You'd get better results with pervasive ground-level CCTV cameras. Ideally you would also RFID-chip the entire population and attach RFID sensors to the cameras. This would allow you to find video of any person through a search engine: "what was Mr Smith doing at 11am on Sunday 19th March, 2017?". If you are a policeman, you could observe the recorded activities of any suspect until you found something to charge them with.
Without RFID or similar tracking technology, you'd have to rely on error-prone facial recognition which would make the data set too noisy to be useful.
Strange to think that the above is technologically feasible right now. Most people won't put up with being RFID-chipped yet, but that will change after a few more "terror alerts" and child abductions. People are lazy and like to feel safe: pervasive surveillance will be very effective at providing the illusion of security and safety. And politicians like to feel that their jobs are secure.
It seems to me that if the conjecture of a genetic basis is right, then this probably does little to help agnostics like me decide whether or not God exists.
I'm an agnostic too. I think that the existence of a need for religion is not evidence for God.
I think God is totally separate from religion... in short, that all religions have been made up by humans. Now I may be wrong about this - one religion might be correct - but I think it's extremely unlikely that any are because all of them seem to be very similar and all of them are mutually exclusive.
I'd say that we already know from thousands of years of human civilisation that humans (a) need religion and (b) are prepared to invent it. There are some religions that are very obviously human inventions - Mormonism for one, Scientology for another. Older religions are, in my mind, equally suspect: there are plenty of parts of the Old Testament that are incorrect and therefore unlikely to have been inspired by God (Book of Genesis, for example).
Even if God had never communicated with any human, humans would have invented Him. But God might still exist, despite all that. It's just a shame that we have no way to distinguish true statements about God from false ones. I wish He'd given us His telephone number.
Not only that, it's becoming a non issue. How would a rootkit install itself above a hypervisor on a box where the boot sector is on write protected FLASH?
I think that is exactly how online activation CD keys work. The key has some sort of checksum built into it so that some offline checking is possible. This is to detect typos. But it is not a strong check. The full check is performed online against the list of valid and unused keys, which as you say are generated from random data.
Suppose the key is 125 bits in size. (5 words of 5 characters, with each character representing 5 bits). Say 10 bits are devoted to a checksum, so that there is only a 1 in 1024 chance of an incorrectly entered key being accepted by the offline check. That still leaves 115 random bits of key data. Knowing how to compute the checksum has not significantly reduced the key space.
The software manufacturer might sell 2^30 (about 1 billion) copies of the software, if everyone with a computer bought a copy. For this, they generate 2^30 valid keys out of the possible key space of 2^85. Your chances of guessing one of those 2^30 valid keys are 1 in 2^55, assuming that the valid keys are equally distributed in the key space (which they will be - they'll be generated from a proper source of random numbers).
In other words, it is extremely unlikely that anyone would ever guess a correct key. Particularly as each guess requires a request to be sent to the software manufacturer, which puts a limit on the number of keys that can be tested in any period of time. 1 in 2^55 is 1 in 3.6e+16 - you'd have better luck on a lottery.
When I was younger I had this 200-in-1 kit which I am amazed to see is still being made! The manual for this one was good, at least in the edition I had. It included circuit diagrams for everything along with some explanation. Early circuits included wiring instructions - later on, you were supposed to figure those out from the circuit diagram. The projects start simple: by the end, you're using almost all the components on the board.
I see that the same company makes a 500-in-1 kit. Assuming this is of the same quality, it would be worth considering.
The problem with the 200-in-1 kit is probably common to all such kits. The transistors, ICs and LEDs are real - they are easy to damage by incorrect connection. You can replace the transistors with a bit of effort, but some components are soldered directly to a board. It's a real pain if you damage anything. I also don't like the use of batteries as a power source. I suppose that's a safety thing, but I'd prefer a good quality low-voltage PSU with an electronic fuse.
I think the next step after a kit like this is making your own circuits from 74-series logic ICs, which provide basic logic functions and some more complex devices like flip-flops, registers and counters. You can make all sorts of fun stuff with this, and you really only need a data book that covers the 74 series, a breadboard and a 5 volt PSU. This is great fun. Especially when you add a microcontroller!
Actually the system call handler was probably written in PPC assembly. The system call handler is an interrupt service routine: it does the following jobs -
1. Save user mode registers (context switch). 2. Manipulate special purpose registers, e.g. re-enable interrupts. 3. Jump to system call service routine, based on the system call number passed as a parameter. This is where the bug was found - the jump destination was being computed incorrectly. 4. Restore registers. 5. Return to user code.
Even C is too high-level to do most of these operations. Standard C does not allow you to manipulate low-level registers. So assembly is used.
If you are interested, you can find the Linux system call handler for x86 systems in arch/i386/entry.S.
What my problem is that people claim it to positively disprove God.
I agree with you.
I dislike how supporters on both sides of the creationist vs. science debate will insist that they know enough to be able to make wild claims. In the case of the creationists, the claim is that the Bible is the revealed word of God and therefore indisputable regardless of apparently contrary evidence. In the case of some science supporters, the claim is that evolution proves that Genesis is false, therefore the Bible is false, and therefore there is no God.
It's as if the creationists have somehow tricked evolution supporters into arguing on creationist terms- absolute truths, certain knowledge, regardless of evidence. Scientists, don't stoop to that level! Science is never about certainty. We know that evolution is an overwhelmingly likely explanation, given the evidence, and that might tell us something about the truth of some parts of the Bible, but it doesn't tell us anything about the existence of God.
Couldn't you use a semaphore for that? Get your producers to call sem_post when ready, and have your consumer call sem_wait. sem_wait will block until a producer calls sem_post. The relationship between calls to sem_post and calls to sem_wait is guaranteed to be 1:1.
On Windows, there is a much higher penalty associated with spawning a child process than on Unix. This makes using threads much more attractive - they are faster.
I don't know why the Windows equivalent of fork() is slower than the Unix fork(). Perhaps it is a historical thing. Unix programs often use fork() - shell scripts use it all the time (this is one reason why a Python or Perl script is often faster). I'm just guessing now, but perhaps Unix fork() is efficient because it is frequently used and has therefore been optimised in various ways (e.g. memory is only copied if there is a write on Linux). Whereas on Windows, those optimisations are not necessary.
As with the case of the BNP guy who was caught with bomb making materials the media appears to be trying hard to avoid using the word "terrorist" in relation to the letter bomb suspect.
Interesting, I hadn't noticed that. I suppose the T word would be "off-message" at a time when only radical Islamists can be terrorists.
I jumped to the conclusion that the hype surrounding this might be an attempt to distract attention from the ANPR issue while at the same time implying something about people who don't like it.
It's not about the card. Not really. It's the NIR database - an automated system for recording where you go, what you buy, your interactions with officials and (some) of what you do. This takes a lot of smaller databases, many of which already exist, and integrates them into a single database, which (in theory) gives an accurate record of your entire life in a single place. Then the NIR database is updated whenever you use your card (or something linked to it).
Concerns include: 1. Records might not be accurate. 2. People might commit crimes using other people's identities. 3. Records might be used to build criminal cases against people when the police have little evidence (see 1 and 2). 4. Records might be data-mined for "patterns of suspicious activity" to detect criminals. This might produce false positives. 5. People might end up having to prove their own innocence, rather than the onus being on the authorities to prove guilt.
In addition, any database specialist will be able to suggest concerns about the security of the system, especially as it will have a large number of users, throughout the civil service and private business.
The anti-congestion charge one has racked up over 1.5 million signatures, and that too is going to be ignored.
Yes. About 2 million British people went on the anti Iraq war march in London. Blair ignored them. And we all know how well that turned out.
In any case, the media is working as hard as it can to link ANPR protesters to terrorism. Some guy has been sending letter bombs to organisations involved with ANPR and congestion charging. The implication? Same as always: "If we don't have $CIVIL_LIBERTIES_VIOLATION, the $NATIONAL_ENEMY will win!"
I actually find SSH faster, because I've got public key authentication set up and never have to enter a password. Because ssh-agent does all the authentication for me, I can log in to remote machines without any delay at all. Whereas with telnet I would have to enter a password. It would be equally fast to use rlogin with host based authentication, but the thought of using host based authentication makes me feel very ill.
I just enter my passphrase after I log in (using ssh-add), and then ssh-agent manages the RSA key(s) that I use to connect to the other machines.
I highly recommend this arrangement, but if you use it, you must be careful not to enable authentication forwarding to untrusted hosts (-A switch). Also be careful about forwarding X11 connections (-X switch). And don't have one key for all your accounts: divide them into zones of trust, each with a separate key, and never connect from a less-trusted machine to a more-trusted machine. For instance, my computer at work is not as trusted (by me) as my computer at home.
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Now I wonder if they can/do tap into Skype... Fundamentally, this is akin to the DRM issue. Those that want to make calls and talk about anthrax will use modes of communication that aren't monitored and those who pay the penalty are Arab looking Indian dudes... *sigh*...
Skype is a closed network, with a secret protocol. Although the traffic is encrypted, there has been much speculation that backdoors may exist. Indeed, some have been found, although these are bugs and design flaws rather than law enforcement wiretaps. But there is no reason why official wiretaps could not be added at any time. As the source is not open for public review, and each client will execute digitally signed updates, your privacy could be compromised at any time without your knowledge. (Of course, this is also true of any update service that downloads binaries.)
Don't trust closed software with your secrets, whether commercial or personal. You can use a free software VOIP program like Wengo instead, and make it secure using an encrypted VPN (e.g. OpenVPN).
Thanks, most informative!
The --show-session-key option looks handy - but in a way, this illustrates the second point I was getting at, which is that information encrypted with GPG can be recovered as long as any recipient can be forced to give up his private key (or run --show-session-key). This is something that any GPG user should bear in mind, particularly as GPG ciphertext will sit in email boxes for many years. You're trusting the recipient to keep his key secret forever: you trust him now and in the future. Whereas if your ciphertext becomes useless shortly after it is sent, you only have to trust the recipient in the present.
I understand that in some countries, you are legally compelled to provide the keys to access files encrypted with PGP, GPG, etc. if the authorities demand access. If you refuse to produce a working key, or claim to be unable to do so, a judge is able to assume that you are deliberately hiding something.
Firstly, I wondered if anyone could confirm this? I have heard that it is the case for Britain at least, although I don't see how it can possibly be legally compatible with the presumption of innocence.
Secondly, I wanted to suggest that perhaps this is a reason not to use PGP, because PGP encrypted information can always be decrypted using the recipient's key - even many years after the message was originally sent. So law enforcement officers will be able to get old PGP-encrypted documents from your email account (probably even if you delete them, thanks to backup tapes). They'll then be able to force you to decrypt them, and if you don't, they can assume you are witholding the key because the files are full of terrorist plans or whatever.
I suggest that people should only use cryptosystems where the session keys are destroyed immediately after use, such as SSH and (possibly) some secure instant messaging services. Even if law enforcement officers use a wiretap to record everything sent by you over an SSH connection, and then seize your computers, they still can't recover the plaintext because the session keys have already been deleted. It's impossible for you, the suspect, to produce the keys, which should help your legal defense. Here's a way to chat securely by SSH.. if you need to transfer files, you can use SFTP.
Why wouldn't JNI suffice?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I've found that writing a Java interface for a C library isn't a trivial undertaking. JNI is a heavyweight solution because translation steps are needed for most variables on the prologue/epilogue of a native call, and because the native library cannot act as a Java object. In contrast, the interface between (say) Python and C is lightweight - you can make a shared library using C that acts the same as a Python module, and when translation steps are required, they are usually simple. Of course JNI might have improved a bit since I last used it, but I remember it was quite painful.
IMO, there has been an intentional design decision to make JNI impractical for general use, so as to encourage pure Java programs. Well, that's understandable - it's all about portability - but there should be a good way to make use of C/C++ libraries from Java, say by compiling them into bytecodes and providing a "virtual" C runtime using Java code.
The department of Homeland Security has been notified. Ownership of Lego's have officially been declared a crime to be prosecuted by the Patriot Act. This support of terrorist activities will not go unchallenged! Only the Feds are allowed to spy on the populace, the populace is not allowed to own these types of things.
It's not just about spying! The evil terrorists might use them to fly bombs into things! Or evil drug dealers might use long-haul UAVs with GPS to smuggle drugs in from South America!
Think of the children! It's a security crisis! If only there were some way to stop people inventing things.
It still seems to me that fundamentalist Christians are potentially just as dangerous as fundamentalist Muslims. Why wouldn't they be? Their religion has the same foundation in the OT, which is a hateful book of intolerance and officially sanctioned genocide if it is taken literally as the revealed word of God. And Christians are more than capable of doing terrible things despite the teachings of Jesus:- the Holocaust, the Crusades, even the invasion of Iraq.
What is special about Muslims that makes them inherently more dangerous than Christians?
I don't think the answer is "Sharia law", because that law could be "ported" to Christianity, and it would fit just as well.
I think what is really needed is a system for setting up secure conversations. Even if they are just text. So if you want to chat to your friends without fear of eavesdropping, you can just do it. Of course, you can do it right now if you and they are crypto geeks - but most people wouldn't know the difference between PGP and SSL.
I think the software requirements are:
1. Must be secure against both criminals and government officials,
2. Must be usable by any computer user - no understanding of crypto required,
3. No software installation required,
4. Key recovery must be impossible,
5. Must be free software (as in GNU).
Now, common VOIP and IM programs do use encryption, but they are not secure against official spying because backdoors are included. For example, MSN Messenger encrypts messages between your computer and the Messenger servers, but the messages are then decrypted on the server side. Clearly, Microsoft could record what you write. MSN Messenger fails requirement 1 (as well as 4 and 5).
There are specialist VOIP, IM and encryption programs that do not have this disadvantage. But few users already have them installed. So they fail requirements 2 and 3. Additionally, PGP software fails requirement 4, because the session keys are stored encrypted in the ciphertext. This means that your private key can be used to unlock the messages in the future. If the government wants to find out what you wrote, they lock you up until you give up your private key.
I do have an idea for a secure messenger that only requires installation on one of the two computers involved in the chat. I think it should be based on the SSH protocol, which meets requirements 1, 4, and 5. However, perhaps someone else can suggest suitable software that meets these requirements?
Your hard disk may already contain "back doors" in the form of hidden sectors and undocumented features for accessing them. These may already be being used for forensic recovery. Their purpose may not be sinister: they may exist simply so that damaged areas of the disk can be transparently remapped. But it's just another reason why you can never be sure that a piece of data has been deleted from your disk, unless you physically destroy it.
I wonder where Richard M. Stallman gets his disks from? I don't know of any HDD vendors that provide the source code for the drive firmware.
There are plenty of technologies that could be seen as evil, and pervasive surveillance is an obvious candidate.
Think about the software that controls weapons, e.g. missiles. Written by people just like you. How do they justify making software that is intended to kill people? Well, they tell themselves that it will only be used when necessary. The contract isn't with the "War Ministry", it's with the "Department of Defence". So that's all right then. The missiles aren't inherently evil, they just enable evil, and the DoD promises to only use them for good.
Think again about DRM software and TCPA. I bet every techie knows what the FSF and EFF say about DRM and TCPA. But still these things have been designed and implemented by people just like you. How many worked on Vista? None of them thought they were working on "evil technology". DRM and TCPA are just features. There's nothing about them that says they have to be used for evil. They just enable evil. And evil isn't mentioned in the business plan.
It's the same with mega population databases and pervasive surveillance. Sure, it could be used for evil. Yes, that's the most likely scenario. But it's just technology. It's not inherently bad or good. And the politicians say it will be used for good, e.g. catching terrorists. People just like you will design it, implement it, and probably only begin to regret their actions a decade later.
Those who live clean honest lives are very difficult to blackmail. Perhaps those don't go into politics much however.
I think that "clean honest people" are extremely rare. Even if you do stick to the ten commandments you will end up being guilty of something. There are a lot of laws, and beyond laws, there are a lot of things that are not illegal but would nevertheless kill a political career if exposed. It is basically impossible to live a life that is completely free of sin, because if you look far enough, anything might be a sin. Jesus once said something to this effect: no one is perfect, but you get points for trying.
Abraham Lincoln once said that men with no vices seldom have any virtues. I think we have to acknowledge that politicians are regular people and probably have all sorts of vices. I don't want those vices to be covered up, because that means blackmail. I want them to be acknowledged as part of the package. I want people to accept that no politician will be perfect. Because in the end it's better to have a President that cheats on his wife than a President that starts wars and kills people.
You'd get better results with pervasive ground-level CCTV cameras. Ideally you would also RFID-chip the entire population and attach RFID sensors to the cameras. This would allow you to find video of any person through a search engine: "what was Mr Smith doing at 11am on Sunday 19th March, 2017?". If you are a policeman, you could observe the recorded activities of any suspect until you found something to charge them with.
Without RFID or similar tracking technology, you'd have to rely on error-prone facial recognition which would make the data set too noisy to be useful.
Strange to think that the above is technologically feasible right now. Most people won't put up with being RFID-chipped yet, but that will change after a few more "terror alerts" and child abductions. People are lazy and like to feel safe: pervasive surveillance will be very effective at providing the illusion of security and safety. And politicians like to feel that their jobs are secure.
It seems to me that if the conjecture of a genetic basis is right, then this probably does little to help agnostics like me decide whether or not God exists.
I'm an agnostic too. I think that the existence of a need for religion is not evidence for God.
I think God is totally separate from religion... in short, that all religions have been made up by humans. Now I may be wrong about this - one religion might be correct - but I think it's extremely unlikely that any are because all of them seem to be very similar and all of them are mutually exclusive.
I'd say that we already know from thousands of years of human civilisation that humans (a) need religion and (b) are prepared to invent it. There are some religions that are very obviously human inventions - Mormonism for one, Scientology for another. Older religions are, in my mind, equally suspect: there are plenty of parts of the Old Testament that are incorrect and therefore unlikely to have been inspired by God (Book of Genesis, for example).
Even if God had never communicated with any human, humans would have invented Him. But God might still exist, despite all that. It's just a shame that we have no way to distinguish true statements about God from false ones. I wish He'd given us His telephone number.
Not only that, it's becoming a non issue. How would a rootkit install itself above a hypervisor on a box where the boot sector is on write protected FLASH?
Perhaps it might exploit a security hole in the hypervisor itself.
I think that is exactly how online activation CD keys work. The key has some sort of checksum built into it so that some offline checking is possible. This is to detect typos. But it is not a strong check. The full check is performed online against the list of valid and unused keys, which as you say are generated from random data.
Suppose the key is 125 bits in size. (5 words of 5 characters, with each character representing 5 bits). Say 10 bits are devoted to a checksum, so that there is only a 1 in 1024 chance of an incorrectly entered key being accepted by the offline check. That still leaves 115 random bits of key data. Knowing how to compute the checksum has not significantly reduced the key space.
The software manufacturer might sell 2^30 (about 1 billion) copies of the software, if everyone with a computer bought a copy. For this, they generate 2^30 valid keys out of the possible key space of 2^85. Your chances of guessing one of those 2^30 valid keys are 1 in 2^55, assuming that the valid keys are equally distributed in the key space (which they will be - they'll be generated from a proper source of random numbers).
In other words, it is extremely unlikely that anyone would ever guess a correct key. Particularly as each guess requires a request to be sent to the software manufacturer, which puts a limit on the number of keys that can be tested in any period of time. 1 in 2^55 is 1 in 3.6e+16 - you'd have better luck on a lottery.
When I was younger I had this 200-in-1 kit which I am amazed to see is still being made! The manual for this one was good, at least in the edition I had. It included circuit diagrams for everything along with some explanation. Early circuits included wiring instructions - later on, you were supposed to figure those out from the circuit diagram. The projects start simple: by the end, you're using almost all the components on the board.
I see that the same company makes a 500-in-1 kit. Assuming this is of the same quality, it would be worth considering.
The problem with the 200-in-1 kit is probably common to all such kits. The transistors, ICs and LEDs are real - they are easy to damage by incorrect connection. You can replace the transistors with a bit of effort, but some components are soldered directly to a board. It's a real pain if you damage anything. I also don't like the use of batteries as a power source. I suppose that's a safety thing, but I'd prefer a good quality low-voltage PSU with an electronic fuse.
I think the next step after a kit like this is making your own circuits from 74-series logic ICs, which provide basic logic functions and some more complex devices like flip-flops, registers and counters. You can make all sorts of fun stuff with this, and you really only need a data book that covers the 74 series, a breadboard and a 5 volt PSU. This is great fun. Especially when you add a microcontroller!
Actually the system call handler was probably written in PPC assembly. The system call handler is an interrupt service routine: it does the following jobs -
1. Save user mode registers (context switch).
2. Manipulate special purpose registers, e.g. re-enable interrupts.
3. Jump to system call service routine, based on the system call number passed as a parameter. This is where the bug was found - the jump destination was being computed incorrectly.
4. Restore registers.
5. Return to user code.
Even C is too high-level to do most of these operations. Standard C does not allow you to manipulate low-level registers. So assembly is used.
If you are interested, you can find the Linux system call handler for x86 systems in arch/i386/entry.S.
What my problem is that people claim it to positively disprove God.
I agree with you.
I dislike how supporters on both sides of the creationist vs. science debate will insist that they know enough to be able to make wild claims. In the case of the creationists, the claim is that the Bible is the revealed word of God and therefore indisputable regardless of apparently contrary evidence. In the case of some science supporters, the claim is that evolution proves that Genesis is false, therefore the Bible is false, and therefore there is no God.
It's as if the creationists have somehow tricked evolution supporters into arguing on creationist terms- absolute truths, certain knowledge, regardless of evidence. Scientists, don't stoop to that level! Science is never about certainty. We know that evolution is an overwhelmingly likely explanation, given the evidence, and that might tell us something about the truth of some parts of the Bible, but it doesn't tell us anything about the existence of God.
It is a conspiracy started by Microsoft !! They want us to use 'Outlook' i.s.o. 'Evolution' !!!
:)
If email software was subject to survival of the fittest, the dinosaurs would be extinct by now!
Couldn't you use a semaphore for that? Get your producers to call sem_post when ready, and have your consumer call sem_wait. sem_wait will block until a producer calls sem_post. The relationship between calls to sem_post and calls to sem_wait is guaranteed to be 1:1.
Did I misunderstand what you were trying to do?
On Windows, there is a much higher penalty associated with spawning a child process than on Unix. This makes using threads much more attractive - they are faster.
I don't know why the Windows equivalent of fork() is slower than the Unix fork(). Perhaps it is a historical thing. Unix programs often use fork() - shell scripts use it all the time (this is one reason why a Python or Perl script is often faster). I'm just guessing now, but perhaps Unix fork() is efficient because it is frequently used and has therefore been optimised in various ways (e.g. memory is only copied if there is a write on Linux). Whereas on Windows, those optimisations are not necessary.
Here is another picture of an in-flight entertainment system running Linux, seemingly booting up:
n ux-the-reliability-myth-debunked.aspx
http://www.shelleytherepublican.com/2006/12/01/li
As with the case of the BNP guy who was caught with bomb making materials the media appears to be trying hard to avoid using the word "terrorist" in relation to the letter bomb suspect.
Interesting, I hadn't noticed that. I suppose the T word would be "off-message" at a time when only radical Islamists can be terrorists.
I jumped to the conclusion that the hype surrounding this might be an attempt to distract attention from the ANPR issue while at the same time implying something about people who don't like it.
It's not about the card. Not really. It's the NIR database - an automated system for recording where you go, what you buy, your interactions with officials and (some) of what you do. This takes a lot of smaller databases, many of which already exist, and integrates them into a single database, which (in theory) gives an accurate record of your entire life in a single place. Then the NIR database is updated whenever you use your card (or something linked to it).
Concerns include:
1. Records might not be accurate.
2. People might commit crimes using other people's identities.
3. Records might be used to build criminal cases against people when the police have little evidence (see 1 and 2).
4. Records might be data-mined for "patterns of suspicious activity" to detect criminals. This might produce false positives.
5. People might end up having to prove their own innocence, rather than the onus being on the authorities to prove guilt.
In addition, any database specialist will be able to suggest concerns about the security of the system, especially as it will have a large number of users, throughout the civil service and private business.
The anti-congestion charge one has racked up over 1.5 million signatures, and that too is going to be ignored.
Yes. About 2 million British people went on the anti Iraq war march in London. Blair ignored them. And we all know how well that turned out.
In any case, the media is working as hard as it can to link ANPR protesters to terrorism. Some guy has been sending letter bombs to organisations involved with ANPR and congestion charging. The implication? Same as always: "If we don't have $CIVIL_LIBERTIES_VIOLATION, the $NATIONAL_ENEMY will win!"
I actually find SSH faster, because I've got public key authentication set up and never have to enter a password. Because ssh-agent does all the authentication for me, I can log in to remote machines without any delay at all. Whereas with telnet I would have to enter a password. It would be equally fast to use rlogin with host based authentication, but the thought of using host based authentication makes me feel very ill.
I just enter my passphrase after I log in (using ssh-add), and then ssh-agent manages the RSA key(s) that I use to connect to the other machines.
I highly recommend this arrangement, but if you use it, you must be careful not to enable authentication forwarding to untrusted hosts (-A switch). Also be careful about forwarding X11 connections (-X switch). And don't have one key for all your accounts: divide them into zones of trust, each with a separate key, and never connect from a less-trusted machine to a more-trusted machine. For instance, my computer at work is not as trusted (by me) as my computer at home.