Why on earth port Debian (an excellent system, BTW) to FreeBSD (another excellent system IMHO)? FreeBSD already has its own (outstanding) ports/package system and I totally fail to see what kind of interest is at play here.
And the absolutely worst thing is that it raises all kind of licensing questions (BSD vs GPL) and library porting (glibc vs libc) -- this thing is totally beyond me. Again: what is the interest of having Debian ported under FreeBSD?
I can understand Debian/HURD, but Debian/FreeBSD is the weirdest thing I have heard in ages. If a gentle/. reader could explain this whole situation to me, I would be definitely grateful!
While I believe this has been said before, I am afraid the only solution is "All encryption, all the time". Projects like S/WAN, OpenSSH, OpenBSD and others are already available, and they are our only chance to protect everyone's privacy in the future.
A few random ideas... Consider this my "wishlist":
Encrypted IP traffic: communications between your ISP and your computer are always protected by some sort of S/WAN, OpenSSH, or a "real" PPPTP with strong, open-source encryption using peer-reviewed algorithms.
IP Telephony and IP Fax become widely-used and are protected with the above solutions. PGPFone already exists and there are already commercial solutions for encrypted fax. GPGFone/Fax anyone?
(To be designed) Encrypted and optimized file systems are systematically used on all servers and workstations -- protecting privacy with a minimal performance hit.
Cracking contest (distributed.net-style) are always held in order to deduce best key size and security offered by a crypto system.
(To be designed) E-Mail programs that automatically attach either your public key or a pointer (finger/URL) to your public key. Automatic duplication of public key on designated regional/local/corporate reference servers if/when an e-mail message goes through them, with auto-replication every month (for instance).
(To be designed) E-Mail program that automagically use encryption to protect your correspondence and encrypt everything by default. Auto signature and authentication should also be enabled by default.
(To be designed) IP protocol to automatically request and exchange public keys. Auto-storage of public keys in e-mail system database to be used while sending e-mail.
(To be designed) TEMPEST countermeasures!!! There has to be a way to stop snoops from spying on CRT/CPU radio emissions!
Auto-SLL with strong crypto for all e-mail based on the web.
Etc...
If most of these points are actually implemented, we may be protected from Echelon, depending on the sophistication of the cracking techniques of the NSA. What you write in a forum like/. would be the only non-protected form of speech -- even though we may imagine a cryptographically strong Slashdot, where we would all be ACs!! =)
On a side note: "The Independent" is a very well-known and accurate newspaper in the UK. You can have a fair amount of trust in this paper -- it's not called "The Independent" for nothing.
Of course this opinion is worth exactly what you paid for it... =)
If Microsoft starts charging corporations a certain fee according to the number of Internet connections they get, how long do you think these same corporations will finally realize the potential of Linux/*BSD Operating Systems and associated Open Source software (for instance: Apache)?
After all, most corporate Linux users have been attracted by these solutions because of an unbeatable price/performance/reliability ratio.
Expect a mass migration to Open Source soon. And a quick change in the pricing structure of W2K.
Fun slogans of the day: -- W2K: the other Y2K problem! -- W2K: Just when you think your computer was safe again... -- W2K: Just like Y2K. Only worse.
The second part of my message actually details the way they could improve, not the speed of the connection, but the reliability of the communication between modem and ISP.
No matter what they do, though, 56K is the maximum that the FCC (and, AFAIK, the rules of physics) allows on a normal analog line.
So: faster speed is not possible, unless you switch to a digital (ISDN for instance) line. But better reliability may be possible -- again, we won't know unless 3Com gives away more info.
Hang on -- how can you get a faster ping if the pinged server is down, if there is some Internet congestion or if there is a backhoe (snip!) between you and the machine? =)
That does not make sense to me!
On the other hand, 3Com may have improved the connection reliability and line noise with clever hardware -- but if that's the case, I'd like to have more detailed technical info on how they did it...
Don't think about it as "automatic" translation, it's much more likely to work out as semi-automatic. I expect that the process would be something like this:
1.Run automatic converter from natural language to intermediate. 2.Have an expert in the intermediate language review the translation. 3.Run automatic converters to the target natural languages. 4.Have linguists review the output.
Compare and contrast with a "traditional" translation process:
1. Ask a translator to translate from language "A" to target "B". Ideally, the person in charge of the translation should be fluent in language A, a native speaker of B and have at least basic knowledge of the subject at hand (for instance: Open Source).
2. Ask a linguist, (ideally fluent in language A, native speaker of B, etc.) to review the translation produced at step 1.
The point is that the intermediate language should be designed to be free of the ambiguities that plague language translation.
And how exactly can you do this? Either your intermediate language is "limited" (that is to say: misses many of the subtleties of the original language), which eases step #1 but certainly introduces many errors down the line. Or, it is an "advanced" language, that is able to translate many of the finer point of your "start" language -- but then, the interesting thing is the translation engine itself. Not the intermediate language. If your translation engine is good enough to translate, say, Spanish into UNL with little/no loss of meaning, it is also good enough to translate Spanish to English with no intermediate step!! If this is true, what's the point of UNL.
Another point is, how can you be an expert in an "intermediate language"? Either the language is "human-readable", but probably produces an output compared to sludge and correcting this sludge may introduce additional errors. Not to mention the pain it represents to check on something that borders on the unreadable. Or it is machine readable -- but in that case, who is going to read it?
Final point is productivity: using UNL, computers and machine translation may take longer than a simple translation "by hand" with human grey matter. A Windoze95 machine with MS Word and some good "paper" or digital dictionaries is, in many cases, more efficient and cheaper than going through the pain of machine translation.
The hope is to minimize or eliminate step (4).
Good luck! Frankly, this has been the "Holy Grail" of machine translation ever since it started. And I do not think we are any closer. So, far, every large, international institution that I am aware of (UN, UNESCO, EU Commission, EU Parliament, NATO, IMF, etc) either use tons of translators or have standardized on a couple of languages at most (English being, of course, the "Lingua Franca"). All the large international institutions mentioned above that use machine translations ahve discovered that, even on simple subjects, the 4th step you describe above is the one that consumes the largest time.
It would be a big win if you could get to the point where all the hard stuff is done just *once* instead of repeated over and over again for all of your target languages.
Again, this is the "Holy Grail" of machine translation. I don't believe that we are any closer to it than we were, say, 30 years ago. At least not judging from the output of some of the software available out there...
And no, this will not work for poetry or humor, but there's no good way to translate poetry and humor in any case. The idea would be to get it to work with technical, legal, and business language.
Sorry to say this, but this does not work very well either for legal or technical language. It may work with Business, since PHBs are so limited intellectually =). Legal translation can be horrendous: I have translated many legal documents in the past and I can tell you there is nothing worse than that, because legal terms are incredibly complicated and old-fashioned and also since legal trivia has to be rendered in a very exact manner. Legal terminology (in almost every language) is one of the most confusing and complicated one. Plus, lawyers and legal people are a major pain in the neck when it comes to Once you get the terminology right, I agree the rest of a legal document is usually a matter of "filling the blanks". But getting the legal terms right is enough to drive you nuts.
Technical translation is another problem: I think some technical areas may be the best bet for machine translation yet. The problem, as far as the technical field is concerned, is that in fast-moving areas (computer science is one) the technical vocabulary is changing and evolving so fast it's hard to keep up pace. I read up to 5 computer magazines a week (not to mention a daily dose of Slashdot =) just to keep up-to-date with the latest evolution in language and technology. Keeping a UNL database of terms and translation could prove to be a daunting task...
>What's so special about UNL? Theoretical translation of language A into a universal language and from there to language B is almost as old as "machine" translation itself.
The fundamental argument is that it hasn't worked before so it isn't going to work now is stupid. It has been demonstrated how difficult it is to do this, but not that it is impossible.
Please note that I never said (in the sentence you quote above) that this is not going to work. I just said that, as far as I am concerned, using an "intermediate" language is old news. This may be a new and interesting idea to you, but, frankly, for someone who has worked in translation, you could very well trace back this concept all the way to Volapuk and Esperanto. And these two were invented in the 19th century.
As far as I am concerned, I think you could prove that correct translation is impossible. All you would have to prove is that a "human" language is a chaotic complex system, which usually follows unpredictable rules and has several strange attractors, inducing a runaway complexity.
Case in point: English. Roots: Saxon dialects, Norman dialects, Old English and Old French. Latin. A little bit of Greek. Maybe German and Old Dutch. Evolution influenced by French and a myriad of other languages. Now divided into several branches (US English, British English, Irish English, Australian English, Indian English, International English), all of them influencing each other and countless other languages. Reducing the English language to a set of neat little equations and computer routines is left as an exercice to the reader... =)
Please understand me: computer translation of "basic" English into UNL and from there into Chinese, French, Spanish, Italian, Japanese, etc... is no big deal. Computer translation of highly technical/scientific papers may be achieved. But even then, due to the inherent complexity of English (or any other human language), a human will have to review the machine translation and correct it.
I therefore suppose that perfect translation does not exist (or is impossible). Translation (like programming) is an art, not a science. You can have a certain number of "artistic" rules, but you cannot have a "perfect", scientifically proven, solution.
Example: give a problem to be solved to two good programmers, and they'll probably come up with two different and equally valid solutions. Which solution you pick has to be determined by other factors (speed of implementation, maintenance and evolution of the system, optimization, resources used, etc).
Give a translation to be done to two good translators and they will probably come up with two rather different and equally valid translations. Which one you pick is then determined by other factors (length of translation, speed of said translators, price of translation, style, etc). Complex systems, like languages, cannot be reduced or predicted. They can be analyzed and more or less "solved" -- the quality of the solution being dependent on many factors, such as the experience of the specialist, his choice of tools, etc. This is true even in reductive or limited systems, where, for instance, the vocabulary to used is small (see technical translation above).
Remember the butterfly in Brazil that creates a storm at the other end of the world? I suspect translation (especially multiple language translation) may well be the kind of complex system that is so hard to solve using computers.
Perfect translation, like perfect programming, is only possible in a very limited scope. A "DO... UNTIL" loop is the perfect solution for certain problems, and "dinero" is the perfect translation of "money" into Spanish. A TCP/IP stack, no matter which OS it is running on, will always have some sort of ACK/NACK test. But these are all very limited examples.
>For a good example of the total and dismal failure of machine translation, >try translating this text into French (or Spanish, or Italian, or whatever) >with Babelfish and back to English. Then do it a few times. Then try >English to Chinese and back a few times. Case closed.
Hardly, Here's why that is not a valid test
1.Babelfish doesn't use an intermediate language. 2.Babelfish doesn't even achieve loseless translation from language A to B and back to A. This is the simplest case and one which can be improved the most with a good definition for UNL.
Answers:
1. A intermediate language should introduce even more bugs into Babelfish translation. See above. 2. "Lossless" translation is impossible. See above. Complex systems, such as human languages, cannot be reduced easily to a set of equations.
>It is, in fact, an even better AI test than the Turing test.
They do not claim perfect translation, but yes computer which could translate between languages and do it perfectly would pass the test. Do you really argue that it is impossible for computer programs to ever pass the turing test? It is only a matter of time till this happens. The only way to stop it is to stop making computers.
Actually, I thought a computer had managed to recently pass the Turing Test, or some limited version of it. Anyone out there could supply information on this one?
But: I don't think the Turing test is actually a very good AI test. There is a huge difference between a program that is able to "talk" to you (parrot back what you said) and one which is able to understand you. A computer able to understand human language would probably be the first real AI on this planet. Most Turing test software are based on some variation of Eliza, and this has been around for ages.
Here we are reading/. At the very heart of the cutting edge. (some text removed) I wouldn't expect your friends to be out of work any time soon. But isn't the job of a professional translator radically different now than it would have been 100 yrs ago? Political change was not the only thing that caused this change... communication technology has had a big role.
Well, this may be surprising to you, but the work of a professional translator has not evolved very much. Computer and communication technologies have eased their task a lot. Like many other professions, translators are now able to work from home, access the Internet and its wealth of information, send documents to clients by e-mail, and even use some very clever software that ease the translation process (TM/2, Trados, etc).
Word processing, in particular, certainly is the best thing to happen to translators since sliced bread =). Also, I agree that many new translation fields have been added in the past century: biology, computer science, aerospace, etc.
But the central fact remains this: to be a translator you have to be fluent in (at least) one language, a native speaker of another, and have a good expertise in one or more field of human activity. That's it. Oh, and you have to have a certain "talent" with languages, just like you need to have a certain "talent" for programming. It's an art, remember? Even the best-trained translator is worth 0 if he/she does not have that special "talent". Exactly like a lot of people work on Linux -- but there is only one Linus Torvald. =)
We may translate faster, have more tools and information at our disposal, and produce better-looking documents -- but the core skills remain the same and the work process is exactly the same. You could train a translator today in the exact same way they were trained 100 years ago: with a pen and a piece of paper. Sorry to disappoint you, but Computer technology is not always the perfect solution it prides itself to be...
Several points -- for full disclosure, let me just state that I am a localization engineer, with a 5+ years of experience in software localization (read: adaptation into different languages) and a 7+ years experience in translation. If that does not makes me qualified to comment on this, I don't know what does.
First of all, I do not really believe the UN can produce anything remotely interesting, technically speaking. I like the IETF motto: "we believe in rough consensus, and working code". Show me the money^H^H^H^H^Hcode first, please.
What's so special about UNL? Theoretical translation of language A into a universal language and from there to language B is almost as old as "machine" translation itself. As far as I remember, early EU research into machine translation were based on a similar idea -- and they were dismissed as a failure.
For a good example of the total and dismal failure of machine translation, try translating this text into French (or Spanish, or Italian, or whatever) with Babelfish and back to English. Then do it a few times. Then try English to Chinese and back a few times. Case closed.
People, Star Trek is nothing but TV! Don't misunderstand me: I love spending an evening with Cap't Kirk and Mr Spock, but this not reality! The Universal Translator is, in my opinion, a perfect (read: impossible) dream. It is, in fact, an even better AI test than the Turing test. The day a computer can perfectly translate a text from language A to language B is (a) the day I'll be out of a job and (b) the day I'll begin to seriously worry about that glowing red camera and calm voice saying: "Would you like a nice game of chess, Dave?".
Frankly, would you trust somthing as big, bureaucratic and inefficient as the UN to determine the next standard in machine translation?
Finally, I have some friends who work at the UN as official translators, and they are doing perfectly fine, thank you very much (and, I should manking some serious money). Why? Because, AFAIK, no machine has ever been able to translate perfectly the multiple meanings, subtle changes in context, double-entendre, puns, cultural and historical framework, regionalisms, etc. that exist in every language on this Earth. Call it the "Curse of Babel" if you will, but a human brain is, and will remain for a long time the best translation machine there is. Machine translation has its place, but only on documents of a very limited scope/vocabulary and of a very repetitive and technical nature. Even then, a human translator is needed to correct the multiple mistakes made by the machine.
Of course, I may be completely wrong and UNL may be the next best thing since sliced bread. But I doubt it.
Please note that I did not say he was not giving any money -- but that, compared to his incredible bank account (don't forget we are dealing with the richest man in the world!) he does not seem to give much.
Remember also that Mr Gates also has a finger in many, many, many pies -- even if Microsoft was to disappear tomorrow, he would probably still make in the top 10% of wealthy white male.
1. Mr Gates, given that the vast majority of micro-computer owners use Windows, how come Microsoft keeps on releasing buggy and insecure software? Don't you think quality should be your main corporate concern?
2. Mr Gates, given your immense fortune and undeniable intelligence, how come you have given so little of your own money to worthy cause? I know you have set up a "Bill & Melinda Gates" foundation -- but it has been pretty much absent from the news. Don't you think you are setting a bad example for the younger generations by flaunting so openly your wealth and your greed?
Yes, I know, that's *four* questions -- but they are really lumped together in two categories... =)
Actually, I am not sure the Wassenaar Agreement will be respected at all. I am going to check if I can find some more information on this. I doubt it will be applied, even if signed by different countries, since most European countries realize e-commerce is going to be big -- and they don't want to surrender their financial and communication independence to the US.
As far as I know, Finland is a member of the European Union (EU), but not of NATO, since it is supposed to be a "neutral" country. Switzerland is not a member of EU or of NATO, since these guys take their neutrality more seriously than anybody else.
Moving to Switzerland may not be such a good idea for Theo & the OpenBSD project: it's very hard to obtain residency and work permits in Switzerland. On the other hand, if a swiss computer firm was to hire him, getting the necessary authorization & paperworks in order would be much easier (think Linus Torvald & Transmeta). In any case, this is nothing more than an empty discussion, since Canada has been very friendly so far.
In my opinion, most European countries will end up saying "we don't care" to Janet Reno and adopt strong crypto -- unless the US government just drops the whole crypto regulation idea in the dustbin, where it belongs.
1. (minor gripe) How come that OpenBSD is not mentioned in Slashdot's original mention of the aticle? (end minor gripe). Please note: That's a *minor* gripe, people!
2. I thought the US Navy was using WinNT exclusively? =)
Thus, the Navy's project is built with Italian enhancements to a Canadian product that was born in a U.S. university. What is more, it is likely that the software contains pieces of code contributed by programmers in Finland, Germany, Eastern Europe, Russia, Australia, India, Mexico and other countries.
Open Source Rules OK! Go BSD GO!!! =) This being said, isn't it sad^H^H^Hgood that, because of brain-damaged US policies, good programmers can now work in peace in Canada?
3. If Canada starts behaving as stupidly as the American administration does, Theo de Raadt will have to move to Finland or Sweden. Same weather, same relaxed crypto policies, same Internet access. Just a big waste of time. I'll be the first to send some $$$$ his way to make his moving easier...
4. You will have to pry my OpenBSD CDs from my cold finger, Janet Reno! (see below) =)
If the attorney general succeeds in persuading the Europeans and Canadians to shut off the flow of open-source security software, he said, "I think it would be a tragedy."
It's not going to be a tragedy, just a complete waste of time -- most europeans are *fed up* with minor inconveniences such as NSA's Echelon and NSI's policies. They are not going to go back to the "old ways" of doing things. The US administration is behaving is such a heavy-handed manner, there is no way most European governement are going to clamp down on crypto. Even *France* authorized heavy crypto recently for crying out loud! That was a country that used to be lumped with China and Iran as far as crypto used to concerned!
5. Dear Janet: please *get* *a* *clue*. The cat is out of the bag, and there is no way you'll ever, *ever* get it back in...
But in case Reno has her way, the software industry is developing end runs. The administration, for example, has so far declined to regulate the international movement of source code if it is printed on paper, presumably out of concern that such regulation would violate the First Amendment. Thus, several companies are already shipping printouts of their code to Europe where it is scanned into computers.
So: I can't get the source, but I can get the book, right? How stupid can you get?
When asked about the policy's impact on the development of Linux, FreeBSD, and other open-source projects that serve the government's own needs, Reinsch, the commerce undersecretary, said: "It's an important question which we need to study a lot more. We don't have all of the answers."
You probably mean you don't have *any* answer. The crypto part of Linux, *BSD, etc... will simply be programmed out of the US, as they have been for a long time. US crypto policy, just like the walls of Jericho, are built on sand. And it's just as useless.
If only those people could leave people like Theo alone and free to code... *Sheesh*
Don't get me wrong: I am all for it too! I just meant organ replacement may become outer space "killer app", as well as NASA's best chance of finding funds for a future space station...
In this world, most of the people in power (read: presidents, senators, Members or Parliament and so on and so forth) are actually old and male.
These people are also narrow-minded and intellectually challenged. Which is why funds for NASA and space exploration in general have been slooooooowly going down the drain for the past 20+ years.
Now that there is a (slim) hope of being able to grow brand new organs in outer space, do you think the same old and intellectually challenged people realize that, far from wasting taxpayer's money, space exploration is actually our best hope for the future? Do you think they'll start properly funding NASA?
Imagine this: a zero-gravity "organ factory" in a Lagrange point not far from earth, with new and improved space shuttles taking back its "output" to Earth, for the benefit of aging, drooling and filthy rich white male. Sounds like something straight out of William Gibson. Hey, we won't go to Mars -- just to the orbiting hospital.
Or : Yet Another Disgustingly lame Dvorak Article.
Mr Dvorak, please don't put your nice little Windoze machine on *any kind* of permanent 'net connection (cable, ADSL or other) -- or you will get it hammered by every single script kiddie out there . Use a *real* operating system if you want to keep it uncracked. Oh, and, please, please, please avoid pointless exercices in intellectual masturbation, such as "I feel like a huge crackdown is coming for those no-good kids! And about time, too!". You either have some sort of *fact* or insider info or you don't. In your case, you don't: yadda, yadda, yadda.
I am not even going to comment on the "cracker vs hacker" debate. This guy is pathetic and clueless beyond belief. Commercial firewall? Yeah, sure.
All my apologies if I sound a little bit thick-headed, but why on Earth create another licence?
If you feel like helping every single one of your fellow humans (including Bill Gates and Steve Jobs), please use a BSD-style licence. No strings attached whatsoever -- only the simple requirement that people mention your name as the original developer and don't sue you if the darn thing does not work. The worst that can happen is that someone may have to fork the source tree if Big Greedy Corporation Inc. has decided to steal your work and make $$money$$ out of it.
If you feel like you need to protect your software forever and make sure it's never used by big greedy corporations to rip an unsuspecting public, use the FSF GPL. This way, you contribute to a growing pool of free(-speech) software that is usable by everyone for little or no charge. What is even better is that future versions will *have* to be free as well.
Anything else (and I mean *anything* *else*) is just a half-baked attempt by Big Greedy Corporation Inc. to rip-off and exploit the open-source community. Just say no to that type of licence. Just say no to proprietary software and to half-closed licences.
A TGPL is redundant and (in my book) a rehashing of ideas that have been better expressed and better thought-out before.
This opinion is, of course, worth exactly what you paid to read it.... =)
I have to admit this whole Jesux/Lucix religious distro thing has made me laugh like crazy. Not using kill, abort and daemon? Come on, people! I have been ROFL, just reading all the different posts. It certainly made my day! =)
On the other hand, there *is* a strong undercurrent of "give'n'share" christian beliefs to the whole Open Source. RMS has said many times he was inspired in his decision to create the FSF by Jesus "Golden Rule" ("Do unto others as you'd like them to do unto you" or some such). And Larry Wall, creator of Perl, is a Christian, after all, he trained to be a missionary and ended up in IT instead.
The entire "let's-give-it-away-for-free" ethos of Open Source, even though it's probably more a child of the 1960s hippie anti-capitalist/establisment movement than of the Sermon on the Mount (think: Berkeley), has a lot of "points of intersection" with the Christian ethics.
Like many other movements, Christianity is not a huge monolith: it is splintered into many currents and churches -- some may even be "tempted" to put together some sort of "Jesux" distribution. But, verily, verily, I say unto thee that those who want their own distro need to code. And good little fundamentalist Xtians are not supposed to code -- they are supposed to pray and convert heathens in the name of our Lord! =)
Which is another reason why FreeBSD is superior to Linux: the logo prevents Xtian fundamentalists from hijacking the OS for their own purposes... =) Flame all you want: the Lord of Darness loves a good barbecue!
First of all, I am not sure the Wassenaar agreement has anything to do with crypto. I thought it was more about intellectual property (but I may be wrong).
Second, don't forget that some extremely good crypto has been issued from Europe and the rest of the world. For instance, IDEA (which is used by PGP) came from Switzerland. Another crypto proposal, which is currently under review as one of the possible US federal standard, issued from a group of researcher in the Netherlands. Some scandinavian firms, such as DataFellows which is from Finland (I think) already produce some pretty good crypto software, based on Blowfish and IDEA.
There is a lot of money to be made, that's for sure. Which is certainly one of the reasons for this display of crypto love. But I don't think it's the only one.
Rejoice, crypto friends! Strong encryption is now about to be legalized in the US... Or is it?
Here is a quote that I like (from the Washington Post):
Pressed to explain the turnabout, Reno and Hamre said their concerns were assuaged by the administration's pending introduction of legislation called the Cyberspace Electronic Security Act of 1999, which would give the FBI $80 million over the next four years to establish the new code-cracking unit.
That's really interesting. Up until now, the NSA was not allowed by the law to conduct SIGINT (code-cracking) operations against US citizens. Now, this new law gives the FBI a spanking, brand new unit, specialised in... tada! code-cracking! I think this little outfit will be more like a joint-venture between NSA and FBI. It happened before -- but now it's going to be legit.
Think about it for a second: who is the ultimate authority in code-cracking? NSA. Who has been playing the little game of crypto for the past 20+ years? NSA. Who has the brain- and CPU power to do some serious code-cracking? NSA. I can't believe, for more than 10 seconds, that this agency is going to just stand there and let the FBI have it its own way, especially since these people have been very cosy for a number of years now. Expect some interesting stories to surface in the near-future... I really expect the NSA to start spying on US citizens. Maybe not on a scale on a par with the "Echelon" project, but certainly a lot more often than what was the case previously.
Another important question is: WHY NOW? Why accept a law these people have been fighting tooth and nail for the past 5 years?
Is it because there really isn't any choice and crypto's Pandora box is open? It's possible. The rest of the world has been doing a great job creating strong crypto, despite (or because of) the silly US ban on export.
Is it because NSA scientists would like to get fat stock options from new Silicon Valley start-ups? That's possible too. Some of these people are incredibly smart, and it must hurt to see so many bad code out there, while they are the cream of the crop, but can't talk because of the security involved. Expect plenty of little, unknown crypto companies to appear overnight if that's the case.
Is it because the NSA has found a new way to factor prime number? That could also be the case... Imagine 2048 bits crypto cracked in 15 seconds flat and 4096 bits in half an hour, due to to some ultra-secret mathematical breakthrough. Why keep on playing the export control game? Just let crypto go free. NSA can read your e-mail anyway. Oh, and your SSL transactions as well. Of course, it's not going to publicize that fact.
Yeah, I know. I *am* getting paranoid... =)
But you have to admit this last scenario makes sense, all of a sudden. It certainly explain the change of heart of this ultra-secretive organization. And the fact that it makes Al "I invented the Internet" Gore looks good doesn't hurt, either.
The timing of the announcement is fortuitous for Vice President Al Gore, who is scheduled to be in Los Altos on Friday to raise funds for his presidential bid. A year ago, Gore promised to redraft the administration's encryption policy and is widely credited with spearheading the effort.
Hmmmm. Call me paranoid and cynical, but here is what I see:
1. Al Gore, after "inventing" the Internet, declares he was the one to free crypto from its shackles. Much rejoicing ensues. He is able to use this pending legislation to rake in the Corporate money into his "war chest" and makes his election as "Top Dog of the USA" that much easier.
2. Meanwhile, a draft bill is presented to Congress to authorize Crypto export. Conveniently, some representative proposes this (controversial) bill to be examined later on -- say, right after the 2000 presidential election.
3. A short while after the election, some idiot declares that this law cannot be accepted and has to be repelled. Which is what happens after much discussion behind closed doors with the US intelligence community (read: CIA/FBI/NSA).
4. Al Gore, from behind the Great Seal of the President of the United States, puts the blame squarely on Congress. Why should he care anyway? The guy has got the job he wanted.
Remember: this is the same administration that prosecuted Phil Zimmermann for PGP, let Congress pass the CDA and offered the NSA Clipper chip as the ultimate in personal security and encryption.
>Kernel: 2.2.11-SAP2 >[nobody knows what SAP has done with 2.2.11].
Thanks for the info -- but your last sentence seems to imply that SAP did not reveal the changes it has made to kernel 2.2.11? Isn't that a violation of the GPL? Or is it just that they have not published the changes just yet?
If they do publish the changes, and they turn out to be substantial, this could benefit the entire (GNU-) Linux community and not just SAP/Siemens.
Do post more information, and thanks for your work!
1. This entire thing has been organized by a private "foundation". That probably means we are safe from ultra-stupid and clueless laws and regulations, since the proceedings of this conference will not have the same weight as if it was, say, organized by the EU Parliament of Strasbourg. So far, this is one good point.
2. On the other hand... the foundation in question is the *Bertelsmann* Foundation. For those of you who are not in Europe, Bertelsmann is one of the largest publisher in Germany (and also in Europe, and in the world). Think Rupert Murdoch with a German accent, and you have a pretty good idea of what Bertelsmann is. Now, this a certified Very Bad Thing (tm), since German publishers are notoriously conservative and stuck-up. And, AFAIK, Bertelsmann is no exception to the rule, unfortunately.
That does not mean German people (in general) are conservative and stuck-up -- just that their press is. (If you are German, don't flame me, I have very good German friends that I respect and care about -- thank you very much).
3. Another Very, Very, Very BAD Thing (tm) is the roster of "experts" that are on board. We have a *huge* bunch of politicos, law "experts" (read: clueless lawyers) and, worse than this, "law-enforcement experts" -- with a huge contingent of German people. Again, I don't want to appear critical of Germany, but we have to remember it was Bavarian police officers who prosecuted CompuServe for "porn" and also tried to block German users from the XS4LL Dutch web site and access provider because of some leftist/anarchist web site there.
Oh, and we also have a representative from... Microsoft Corporation Europe (Shock! Horror! The Number of the Beast!!) =)
On the plus side, we also have one (count them, people, "one" !) representative from the ACLU. and Esther Dyson, which, I suspect, is more interested in pushing ICANN than really defending free speech. Ouch. Click here for a complete list of experts.
In summary, we have a probably conservative foundation, putting a panel of "experts", made up of "law-enforcement officers" (policemen, to remain polite). That panel of expert is going to convene in a city and a state of Germany known for its heavy-handed tactics against the 'net and its conservative Catholicism. Draw your own conclusions (DYOC).
That does not smell good people. Not by a long shot. I'll keep an eye on this.
Slashdot Mirror
Now, this is extremely weird.
/. reader could explain this whole situation to me, I would be definitely grateful!
Why on earth port Debian (an excellent system, BTW) to FreeBSD (another excellent system IMHO)? FreeBSD already has its own (outstanding) ports/package system and I totally fail to see what kind of interest is at play here.
And the absolutely worst thing is that it raises all kind of licensing questions (BSD vs GPL) and library porting (glibc vs libc) -- this thing is totally beyond me. Again: what is the interest of having Debian ported under FreeBSD?
I can understand Debian/HURD, but Debian/FreeBSD is the weirdest thing I have heard in ages. If a gentle
Ah well. As long as it's open source... =)
A few random ideas... Consider this my "wishlist":
If most of these points are actually implemented, we may be protected from Echelon, depending on the sophistication of the cracking techniques of the NSA. What you write in a forum like
On a side note: "The Independent" is a very well-known and accurate newspaper in the UK. You can have a fair amount of trust in this paper -- it's not called "The Independent" for nothing.
Of course this opinion is worth exactly what you paid for it... =)
If Microsoft starts charging corporations a certain fee according to the number of Internet connections they get, how long do you think these same corporations will finally realize the potential of Linux/*BSD Operating Systems and associated Open Source software (for instance: Apache)?
After all, most corporate Linux users have been attracted by these solutions because of an unbeatable price/performance/reliability ratio.
Expect a mass migration to Open Source soon. And a quick change in the pricing structure of W2K.
Fun slogans of the day:
-- W2K: the other Y2K problem!
-- W2K: Just when you think your computer was safe again...
-- W2K: Just like Y2K. Only worse.
Just my US$ 0.02...
It was a joke! =)
The second part of my message actually details the way they could improve, not the speed of the connection, but the reliability of the communication between modem and ISP.
No matter what they do, though, 56K is the maximum that the FCC (and, AFAIK, the rules of physics) allows on a normal analog line.
So: faster speed is not possible, unless you switch to a digital (ISDN for instance) line. But better reliability may be possible -- again, we won't know unless 3Com gives away more info.
Hang on -- how can you get a faster ping if the pinged server is down, if there is some Internet congestion or if there is a backhoe (snip!) between you and the machine? =)
That does not make sense to me!
On the other hand, 3Com may have improved the connection reliability and line noise with clever hardware -- but if that's the case, I'd like to have more detailed technical info on how they did it...
Just my $0.02...
OK, here are some more answers.
... UNTIL" loop is the perfect solution for certain problems, and "dinero" is the perfect translation of "money" into Spanish. A TCP/IP stack, no matter which OS it is running on, will always have some sort of ACK/NACK test. But these are all very limited examples.
/. At the very heart of the cutting edge. (some text removed) I wouldn't expect your friends to be out of work any time soon. But isn't the job of a professional translator radically different now than it would have been 100 yrs ago? Political change was not the only thing that caused this change... communication technology has had a big role.
Watch out this is very, very long...
Don't think about it as "automatic" translation, it's much more likely to work out as semi-automatic. I expect that the process would be something like this:
1.Run automatic converter from natural language to intermediate.
2.Have an expert in the intermediate language review the translation.
3.Run automatic converters to the target natural languages.
4.Have linguists review the output.
Compare and contrast with a "traditional" translation process:
1. Ask a translator to translate from language "A" to target "B". Ideally, the person in charge of the translation should be fluent in language A, a native speaker of B and have at least basic knowledge of the subject at hand (for instance: Open Source).
2. Ask a linguist, (ideally fluent in language A, native speaker of B, etc.) to review the translation produced at step 1.
The point is that the intermediate language should be designed to be free of the ambiguities that plague language translation.
And how exactly can you do this? Either your intermediate language is "limited" (that is to say: misses many of the subtleties of the original language), which eases step #1 but certainly introduces many errors down the line. Or, it is an "advanced" language, that is able to translate many of the finer point of your "start" language -- but then, the interesting thing is the translation engine itself. Not the intermediate language. If your translation engine is good enough to translate, say, Spanish into UNL with little/no loss of meaning, it is also good enough to translate Spanish to English with no intermediate step!! If this is true, what's the point of UNL.
Another point is, how can you be an expert in an "intermediate language"? Either the language is "human-readable", but probably produces an output compared to sludge and correcting this sludge may introduce additional errors. Not to mention the pain it represents to check on something that borders on the unreadable. Or it is machine readable -- but in that case, who is going to read it?
Final point is productivity: using UNL, computers and machine translation may take longer than a simple translation "by hand" with human grey matter. A Windoze95 machine with MS Word and some good "paper" or digital dictionaries is, in many cases, more efficient and cheaper than going through the pain of machine translation.
The hope is to minimize or eliminate step (4).
Good luck! Frankly, this has been the "Holy Grail" of machine translation ever since it started. And I do not think we are any closer. So, far, every large, international institution that I am aware of (UN, UNESCO, EU Commission, EU Parliament, NATO, IMF, etc) either use tons of translators or have standardized on a couple of languages at most (English being, of course, the "Lingua Franca"). All the large international institutions mentioned above that use machine translations ahve discovered that, even on simple subjects, the 4th step you describe above is the one that consumes the largest time.
It would be a big win if you could get to the point where all the hard stuff is done just *once* instead of repeated over and over again for all of your target languages.
Again, this is the "Holy Grail" of machine translation. I don't believe that we are any closer to it than we were, say, 30 years ago. At least not judging from the output of some of the software available out there...
And no, this will not work for poetry or humor, but there's no good way to translate poetry and humor in any case. The idea would be to get it to work with technical, legal, and business language.
Sorry to say this, but this does not work very well either for legal or technical language. It may work with Business, since PHBs are so limited intellectually =). Legal translation can be horrendous: I have translated many legal documents in the past and I can tell you there is nothing worse than that, because legal terms are incredibly complicated and old-fashioned and also since legal trivia has to be rendered in a very exact manner. Legal terminology (in almost every language) is one of the most confusing and complicated one. Plus, lawyers and legal people are a major pain in the neck when it comes to Once you get the terminology right, I agree the rest of a legal document is usually a matter of "filling the blanks". But getting the legal terms right is enough to drive you nuts.
Technical translation is another problem: I think some technical areas may be the best bet for machine translation yet. The problem, as far as the technical field is concerned, is that in fast-moving areas (computer science is one) the technical vocabulary is changing and evolving so fast it's hard to keep up pace. I read up to 5 computer magazines a week (not to mention a daily dose of Slashdot =) just to keep up-to-date with the latest evolution in language and technology. Keeping a UNL database of terms and translation could prove to be a daunting task...
>What's so special about UNL? Theoretical translation of language A into a universal language and from there to language B is almost as old as "machine" translation itself.
The fundamental argument is that it hasn't worked before so it isn't going to work now is stupid. It has been demonstrated how difficult it is to do this, but not that it is impossible.
Please note that I never said (in the sentence you quote above) that this is not going to work. I just said that, as far as I am concerned, using an "intermediate" language is old news. This may be a new and interesting idea to you, but, frankly, for someone who has worked in translation, you could very well trace back this concept all the way to Volapuk and Esperanto. And these two were invented in the 19th century.
As far as I am concerned, I think you could prove that correct translation is impossible. All you would have to prove is that a "human" language is a chaotic complex system, which usually follows unpredictable rules and has several strange attractors, inducing a runaway complexity.
Case in point: English. Roots: Saxon dialects, Norman dialects, Old English and Old French. Latin. A little bit of Greek. Maybe German and Old Dutch. Evolution influenced by French and a myriad of other languages. Now divided into several branches (US English, British English, Irish English, Australian English, Indian English, International English), all of them influencing each other and countless other languages. Reducing the English language to a set of neat little equations and computer routines is left as an exercice to the reader... =)
Please understand me: computer translation of "basic" English into UNL and from there into Chinese, French, Spanish, Italian, Japanese, etc... is no big deal. Computer translation of highly technical/scientific papers may be achieved. But even then, due to the inherent complexity of English (or any other human language), a human will have to review the machine translation and correct it.
I therefore suppose that perfect translation does not exist (or is impossible). Translation (like programming) is an art, not a science. You can have a certain number of "artistic" rules, but you cannot have a "perfect", scientifically proven, solution.
Example: give a problem to be solved to two good programmers, and they'll probably come up with two different and equally valid solutions. Which solution you pick has to be determined by other factors (speed of implementation, maintenance and evolution of the system, optimization, resources used, etc).
Give a translation to be done to two good translators and they will probably come up with two rather different and equally valid translations. Which one you pick is then determined by other factors (length of translation, speed of said translators, price of translation, style, etc). Complex systems, like languages, cannot be reduced or predicted. They can be analyzed and more or less "solved" -- the quality of the solution being dependent on many factors, such as the experience of the specialist, his choice of tools, etc. This is true even in reductive or limited systems, where, for instance, the vocabulary to used is small (see technical translation above).
Remember the butterfly in Brazil that creates a storm at the other end of the world? I suspect translation (especially multiple language translation) may well be the kind of complex system that is so hard to solve using computers.
Perfect translation, like perfect programming, is only possible in a very limited scope. A "DO
>For a good example of the total and dismal failure of machine translation,
>try translating this text into French (or Spanish, or Italian, or whatever)
>with Babelfish and back to English. Then do it a few times. Then try
>English to Chinese and back a few times. Case closed.
Hardly, Here's why that is not a valid test
1.Babelfish doesn't use an intermediate language.
2.Babelfish doesn't even achieve loseless translation from
language A to B and back to A. This is the simplest case and
one which can be improved the most with a good definition for UNL.
Answers:
1. A intermediate language should introduce even more bugs into Babelfish translation. See above.
2. "Lossless" translation is impossible. See above. Complex systems, such as human languages, cannot be reduced easily to a set of equations.
>It is, in fact, an even better AI test than the Turing test.
They do not claim perfect translation, but yes computer which could translate between languages and do it perfectly would pass the test. Do you really argue that it is impossible for computer programs to ever pass the turing test? It is only a matter of time till this happens. The only way to stop it is to stop making computers.
Actually, I thought a computer had managed to recently pass the Turing Test, or some limited version of it. Anyone out there could supply information on this one?
But: I don't think the Turing test is actually a very good AI test. There is a huge difference between a program that is able to "talk" to you (parrot back what you said) and one which is able to understand you. A computer able to understand human language would probably be the first real AI on this planet. Most Turing test software are based on some variation of Eliza, and this has been around for ages.
Here we are reading
Well, this may be surprising to you, but the work of a professional translator has not evolved very much. Computer and communication technologies have eased their task a lot. Like many other professions, translators are now able to work from home, access the Internet and its wealth of information, send documents to clients by e-mail, and even use some very clever software that ease the translation process (TM/2, Trados, etc).
Word processing, in particular, certainly is the best thing to happen to translators since sliced bread =). Also, I agree that many new translation fields have been added in the past century: biology, computer science, aerospace, etc.
But the central fact remains this: to be a translator you have to be fluent in (at least) one language, a native speaker of another, and have a good expertise in one or more field of human activity. That's it. Oh, and you have to have a certain "talent" with languages, just like you need to have a certain "talent" for programming. It's an art, remember? Even the best-trained translator is worth 0 if he/she does not have that special "talent". Exactly like a lot of people work on Linux -- but there is only one Linus Torvald. =)
We may translate faster, have more tools and information at our disposal, and produce better-looking documents -- but the core skills remain the same and the work process is exactly the same. You could train a translator today in the exact same way they were trained 100 years ago: with a pen and a piece of paper. Sorry to disappoint you, but Computer technology is not always the perfect solution it prides itself to be...
That's All Folks!
Several points -- for full disclosure, let me just state that I am a localization engineer, with a 5+ years of experience in software localization (read: adaptation into different languages) and a 7+ years experience in translation. If that does not makes me qualified to comment on this, I don't know what does.
Of course, I may be completely wrong and UNL may be the next best thing since sliced bread. But I doubt it.
Please note that I did not say he was not giving any money -- but that, compared to his incredible bank account (don't forget we are dealing with the richest man in the world!) he does not seem to give much.
Remember also that Mr Gates also has a finger in many, many, many pies -- even if Microsoft was to disappear tomorrow, he would probably still make in the top 10% of wealthy white male.
CrACkRZ WheEL oF fORtUne! v0.99.14.151
[Win2000 4.00.004 SP7]
[Click here to start]
Checking e-wallet status... Done.
Checking bank account status... Done.
Checking permissions...
One moment please...
How much money would you like to add to your e-wallet? NOTE: if sum > US$ 1,000,000 you could be in TROUBLE!
Enter sum and press [Enter]:99999
US$ 99,999 added to e-wallet account!
Thank you for using CrACkRZ WheEL oF fORtUne!
Bill "Hotmail God" Gates: would you like this man to take care of your money? Thanks, but no thanks.
1. Mr Gates, given that the vast majority of micro-computer owners use Windows, how come Microsoft keeps on releasing buggy and insecure software? Don't you think quality should be your main corporate concern?
2. Mr Gates, given your immense fortune and undeniable intelligence, how come you have given so little of your own money to worthy cause? I know you have set up a "Bill & Melinda Gates" foundation -- but it has been pretty much absent from the news. Don't you think you are setting a bad example for the younger generations by flaunting so openly your wealth and your greed?
Yes, I know, that's *four* questions -- but they are really lumped together in two categories... =)
Actually, I am not sure the Wassenaar Agreement will be respected at all. I am going to check if I can find some more information on this. I doubt it will be applied, even if signed by different countries, since most European countries realize e-commerce is going to be big -- and they don't want to surrender their financial and communication independence to the US.
As far as I know, Finland is a member of the European Union (EU), but not of NATO, since it is supposed to be a "neutral" country. Switzerland is not a member of EU or of NATO, since these guys take their neutrality more seriously than anybody else.
Moving to Switzerland may not be such a good idea for Theo & the OpenBSD project: it's very hard to obtain residency and work permits in Switzerland. On the other hand, if a swiss computer firm was to hire him, getting the necessary authorization & paperworks in order would be much easier (think Linus Torvald & Transmeta). In any case, this is nothing more than an empty discussion, since Canada has been very friendly so far.
In my opinion, most European countries will end up saying "we don't care" to Janet Reno and adopt strong crypto -- unless the US government just drops the whole crypto regulation idea in the dustbin, where it belongs.
Just my US$ 0.02...
Really? Sweden has the same crypto policy as the US?
That sounds surprising -- I thought most scandinavian countries were pretty liberal when it came to personal data privacy and crypto.
Care to elaborate?
A couple of points...
1. (minor gripe) How come that OpenBSD is not mentioned in Slashdot's original mention of the aticle? (end minor gripe). Please note: That's a *minor* gripe, people!
2. I thought the US Navy was using WinNT exclusively? =)
Thus, the Navy's project is built with Italian enhancements to a Canadian product that was born in a U.S. university. What is more, it is likely that the software contains pieces of code contributed by programmers in Finland, Germany, Eastern Europe, Russia, Australia, India, Mexico and other countries.
Open Source Rules OK! Go BSD GO!!! =) This being said, isn't it sad^H^H^Hgood that, because of brain-damaged US policies, good programmers can now work in peace in Canada?
3. If Canada starts behaving as stupidly as the American administration does, Theo de Raadt will have to move to Finland or Sweden. Same weather, same relaxed crypto policies, same Internet access. Just a big waste of time. I'll be the first to send some $$$$ his way to make his moving easier...
4. You will have to pry my OpenBSD CDs from my cold finger, Janet Reno! (see below) =)
If the attorney general succeeds in persuading the Europeans and Canadians to shut off the flow of open-source security software, he said, "I think it would be a tragedy."
It's not going to be a tragedy, just a complete waste of time -- most europeans are *fed up* with minor inconveniences such as NSA's Echelon and NSI's policies. They are not going to go back to the "old ways" of doing things. The US administration is behaving is such a heavy-handed manner, there is no way most European governement are going to clamp down on crypto. Even *France* authorized heavy crypto recently for crying out loud! That was a country that used to be lumped with China and Iran as far as crypto used to concerned!
5. Dear Janet: please *get* *a* *clue*. The cat is out of the bag, and there is no way you'll ever, *ever* get it back in...
But in case Reno has her way, the software industry is developing end runs. The administration, for example, has so far declined to regulate the international movement of source code if it is printed on paper, presumably out of concern that such regulation would violate the First Amendment. Thus, several companies are already shipping printouts of their code to Europe where it is scanned into computers.
So: I can't get the source, but I can get the book, right? How stupid can you get?
When asked about the policy's impact on the development of Linux, FreeBSD, and other open-source projects that serve the government's own needs, Reinsch, the commerce undersecretary, said: "It's an important question which we need to study a lot more. We don't have all of the answers."
You probably mean you don't have *any* answer. The crypto part of Linux, *BSD, etc... will simply be programmed out of the US, as they have been for a long time. US crypto policy, just like the walls of Jericho, are built on sand. And it's just as useless.
If only those people could leave people like Theo alone and free to code... *Sheesh*
Don't get me wrong: I am all for it too!
I just meant organ replacement may become outer
space "killer app", as well as NASA's best chance
of finding funds for a future space station...
Hmmm.
Just a little thought:
In this world, most of the people in power (read: presidents, senators, Members or Parliament and so on and so forth) are actually old and male.
These people are also narrow-minded and intellectually challenged. Which is why funds for NASA and space exploration in general have been slooooooowly going down the drain for the past 20+ years.
Now that there is a (slim) hope of being able to grow brand new organs in outer space, do you think the same old and intellectually challenged people realize that, far from wasting taxpayer's money, space exploration is actually our best hope for the future? Do you think they'll start properly funding NASA?
Imagine this: a zero-gravity "organ factory" in a Lagrange point not far from earth, with new and improved space shuttles taking back its "output" to Earth, for the benefit of aging, drooling and filthy rich white male. Sounds like something straight out of William Gibson. Hey, we won't go to Mars -- just to the orbiting hospital.
Remember: you read it first on Slashdot. =)
YADDA
Or : Yet Another Disgustingly lame Dvorak Article.
Mr Dvorak, please don't put your nice little Windoze machine on *any kind* of permanent 'net connection (cable, ADSL or other) -- or you will get it hammered by every single script kiddie out there . Use a *real* operating system if you want to keep it uncracked. Oh, and, please, please, please avoid pointless exercices in intellectual masturbation, such as "I feel like a huge crackdown is coming for those no-good kids! And about time, too!". You either have some sort of *fact* or insider info or you don't. In your case, you don't: yadda, yadda, yadda.
I am not even going to comment on the "cracker vs hacker" debate. This guy is pathetic and clueless beyond belief. Commercial firewall? Yeah, sure.
All my apologies if I sound a little bit thick-headed, but why on Earth create another licence?
If you feel like helping every single one of your fellow humans (including Bill Gates and Steve Jobs), please use a BSD-style licence. No strings attached whatsoever -- only the simple requirement that people mention your name as the original developer and don't sue you if the darn thing does not work. The worst that can happen is that someone may have to fork the source tree if Big Greedy Corporation Inc. has decided to steal your work and make $$money$$ out of it.
If you feel like you need to protect your software forever and make sure it's never used by big greedy corporations to rip an unsuspecting public, use the FSF GPL. This way, you contribute to a growing pool of free(-speech) software that is usable by everyone for little or no charge. What is even better is that future versions will *have* to be free as well.
Anything else (and I mean *anything* *else*) is just a half-baked attempt by Big Greedy Corporation Inc. to rip-off and exploit the open-source community. Just say no to that type of licence. Just say no to proprietary software and to half-closed licences.
A TGPL is redundant and (in my book) a rehashing of ideas that have been better expressed and better thought-out before.
This opinion is, of course, worth exactly what you paid to read it.... =)
I have to admit this whole Jesux/Lucix religious distro thing has made me laugh like crazy. Not using kill, abort and daemon? Come on, people! I have been ROFL, just reading all the different posts. It certainly made my day! =)
On the other hand, there *is* a strong undercurrent of "give'n'share" christian beliefs to the whole Open Source. RMS has said many times he was inspired in his decision to create the FSF by Jesus "Golden Rule" ("Do unto others as you'd like them to do unto you" or some such). And Larry Wall, creator of Perl, is a Christian, after all, he trained to be a missionary and ended up in IT instead.
The entire "let's-give-it-away-for-free" ethos of Open Source, even though it's probably more a child of the 1960s hippie anti-capitalist/establisment movement than of the Sermon on the Mount (think: Berkeley), has a lot of "points of intersection" with the Christian ethics.
Like many other movements, Christianity is not a huge monolith: it is splintered into many currents and churches -- some may even be "tempted" to put together some sort of "Jesux" distribution. But, verily, verily, I say unto thee that those who want their own distro need to code. And good little fundamentalist Xtians are not supposed to code -- they are supposed to pray and convert heathens in the name of our Lord! =)
Which is another reason why FreeBSD is superior to Linux: the logo prevents Xtian fundamentalists from hijacking the OS for their own purposes... =) Flame all you want: the Lord of Darness loves a good barbecue!
E-Commerce, may be the ticket, but this article from HotWired actually has, IMHO, the best and most intelligent explanation for all this hoopla.
Read it, and go "ah-ha"!
That's debatable.
First of all, I am not sure the Wassenaar agreement has anything to do with crypto. I thought it was more about intellectual property (but I may be wrong).
Second, don't forget that some extremely good crypto has been issued from Europe and the rest of the world. For instance, IDEA (which is used by PGP) came from Switzerland. Another crypto proposal, which is currently under review as one of the possible US federal standard, issued from a group of researcher in the Netherlands. Some scandinavian firms, such as DataFellows which is from Finland (I think) already produce some pretty good crypto software, based on Blowfish and IDEA.
There is a lot of money to be made, that's for sure. Which is certainly one of the reasons for this display of crypto love. But I don't think it's the only one.
Then again, what do I know? =)
Rejoice, crypto friends! Strong encryption is now about to be legalized in the US... Or is it?
Here is a quote that I like (from the Washington Post):
Pressed to explain the turnabout, Reno and Hamre said their concerns were assuaged by the administration's pending introduction of legislation called the Cyberspace Electronic Security Act of 1999, which would give the FBI $80 million over the next four years to establish the new code-cracking unit.
That's really interesting. Up until now, the NSA was not allowed by the law to conduct SIGINT (code-cracking) operations against US citizens. Now, this new law gives the FBI a spanking, brand new unit, specialised in... tada! code-cracking! I think this little outfit will be more like a joint-venture between NSA and FBI. It happened before -- but now it's going to be legit.
Think about it for a second: who is the ultimate authority in code-cracking? NSA. Who has been playing the little game of crypto for the past 20+ years? NSA. Who has the brain- and CPU power to do some serious code-cracking? NSA. I can't believe, for more than 10 seconds, that this agency is going to just stand there and let the FBI have it its own way, especially since these people have been very cosy for a number of years now. Expect some interesting stories to surface in the near-future... I really expect the NSA to start spying on US citizens. Maybe not on a scale on a par with the "Echelon" project, but certainly a lot more often than what was the case previously.
Another important question is: WHY NOW? Why accept a law these people have been fighting tooth and nail for the past 5 years?
Is it because there really isn't any choice and crypto's Pandora box is open? It's possible. The rest of the world has been doing a great job creating strong crypto, despite (or because of) the silly US ban on export.
Is it because NSA scientists would like to get fat stock options from new Silicon Valley start-ups? That's possible too. Some of these people are incredibly smart, and it must hurt to see so many bad code out there, while they are the cream of the crop, but can't talk because of the security involved. Expect plenty of little, unknown crypto companies to appear overnight if that's the case.
Is it because the NSA has found a new way to factor prime number? That could also be the case... Imagine 2048 bits crypto cracked in 15 seconds flat and 4096 bits in half an hour, due to to some ultra-secret mathematical breakthrough. Why keep on playing the export control game? Just let crypto go free. NSA can read your e-mail anyway. Oh, and your SSL transactions as well. Of course, it's not going to publicize that fact.
Yeah, I know. I *am* getting paranoid... =)
But you have to admit this last scenario makes sense, all of a sudden. It certainly explain the change of heart of this ultra-secretive organization. And the fact that it makes Al "I invented the Internet" Gore looks good doesn't hurt, either.
Just my $0.02...
I found this quote *really* interesting...
The timing of the announcement is fortuitous for Vice President Al Gore, who is scheduled to be in Los Altos on Friday to raise funds for his presidential bid. A year ago, Gore promised to redraft the administration's encryption policy and is widely credited with spearheading the effort.
Hmmmm. Call me paranoid and cynical, but here is what I see:
1. Al Gore, after "inventing" the Internet, declares he was the one to free crypto from its shackles. Much rejoicing ensues. He is able to use this pending legislation to rake in the Corporate money into his "war chest" and makes his election as "Top Dog of the USA" that much easier.
2. Meanwhile, a draft bill is presented to Congress to authorize Crypto export. Conveniently, some representative proposes this (controversial) bill to be examined later on -- say, right after the 2000 presidential election.
3. A short while after the election, some idiot declares that this law cannot be accepted and has to be repelled. Which is what happens after much discussion behind closed doors with the US intelligence community (read: CIA/FBI/NSA).
4. Al Gore, from behind the Great Seal of the President of the United States, puts the blame squarely on Congress. Why should he care anyway? The guy has got the job he wanted.
Remember: this is the same administration that prosecuted Phil Zimmermann for PGP, let Congress pass the CDA and offered the NSA Clipper chip as the ultimate in personal security and encryption.
Just my US$0.02...
>Kernel: 2.2.11-SAP2
>[nobody knows what SAP has done with 2.2.11].
Thanks for the info -- but your last sentence seems to imply that SAP did not reveal the changes it has made to kernel 2.2.11? Isn't that a violation of the GPL? Or is it just that they have not published the changes just yet?
If they do publish the changes, and they turn out to be substantial, this could benefit the entire (GNU-) Linux community and not just SAP/Siemens.
Do post more information, and thanks for your work!
Which distribution did they use? =)
Red Hat, Caldera, Mandrake, Slackware, Debian, SuSE? I think this last one is the best bet, since SAP A.G. and Siemens are both German companies...
Yes, this should be moderated as "flamebait"! =)
Here are a few thoughts on this conference...
A couple of points to be noticed:
1. This entire thing has been organized by a private "foundation". That probably means we are safe from ultra-stupid and clueless laws and regulations, since the proceedings of this conference will not have the same weight as if it was, say, organized by the EU Parliament of Strasbourg. So far, this is one good point.
2. On the other hand... the foundation in question is the *Bertelsmann* Foundation. For those of you who are not in Europe, Bertelsmann is one of the largest publisher in Germany (and also in Europe, and in the world). Think Rupert Murdoch with a German accent, and you have a pretty good idea of what Bertelsmann is. Now, this a certified Very Bad Thing (tm), since German publishers are notoriously conservative and stuck-up. And, AFAIK,
Bertelsmann is no exception to the rule, unfortunately.
That does not mean German people (in general) are
conservative and stuck-up -- just that their press is. (If you are German, don't flame me, I have very good German friends that I respect and care about -- thank you very much).
3. Another Very, Very, Very BAD Thing (tm) is the roster of "experts" that are on board. We have a *huge* bunch of politicos, law "experts" (read: clueless lawyers) and, worse than this, "law-enforcement experts" -- with a huge contingent of German people. Again, I don't want to appear critical of Germany, but we have to remember it was Bavarian police officers who prosecuted CompuServe for "porn" and also tried to block German users from the XS4LL Dutch web site and access provider because of some leftist/anarchist web site there.
Oh, and we also have a representative from... Microsoft Corporation Europe (Shock! Horror! The Number of the Beast!!) =)
On the plus side, we also have one (count them, people, "one" !) representative from the ACLU. and Esther Dyson, which, I suspect, is more interested in pushing ICANN than really defending free speech. Ouch. Click here for a complete list of experts.
In summary, we have a probably conservative foundation, putting a panel of "experts", made up of "law-enforcement officers" (policemen, to remain polite). That panel of expert is going to convene in a city and a state of Germany known for its heavy-handed tactics against the 'net and its conservative Catholicism. Draw your own conclusions (DYOC).
That does not smell good people. Not by a long shot. I'll keep an eye on this.
Just my US$ 0.02...