Actually,/dev/urandom uses cryptographically secure random number generator. If you've used a reliable/dev/random seed then/dev/urandom is secure for all practical purposes.
And THEN real security using IPSec. What's the point of protecting the wireless transmissions if anybody can plug anything into a nearest switch and sniff everything in their network segment?
4 years ago I've helped to manage a mesh WiFi network for a fairly large enterprise. It covered a large building with about 1000 people working simultaneously. It was first intended as a temporary network (they had to relocate quickly, because of a fire in their old building). But it worked well enough to become the main network.
Keys to success: low-power APs with WDS, and gigabit Ethernet trunks + switches with STP. We used WPA with pre-shared password for wireless security and then IPSec for IP-level security (it was used with the wired network earlier so no setup was required).
As far as I remember, an average access point served about 15 clients. We manually set all the access points to the lowest possible power level, but apart from that we did no additional setup.
So it's OK if I attach GPS to your car and then broadcast its location?
After all, it's not like I would be broadcasting your location. No, no! I'd broadcasting the location of the GPS receiver. Which just happens to be within a few meters of the driver's seat of you car.
"If you build a device out of metal and that device is covered by a patent, and then I make a device using the same plans but I make mine out of wood, it uses the patented idea."
Nope. That depends on patent claims. If it reads like "a metal rod for pushing things" then your "cylindrical wooden apparatus for pushing things around" would NOT be infringing.
It gets more complex if the other patent just says "a rod for pushing things around". Then your invention might still be granted a patent (for example, if your idea of using wood allows to build lightweight rods) but you _might_ need to license another patent if you want to build wooden rods.
Such hacks are easily defeated by proper architecture. Most likely, automatic cars will have several levels of functions with firewalls between them. For example: 1) Low level - engine control. 2) Situational awareness - do not accelerate into pedestrians. 3) Global awareness - traffic patterns and navigation.
So hackers will only be able to influence the last level of the hierarchy. So they can route your car into an incorrect location, but they won't be able to drive it off the road.
"No doubt the nazis killed many Russian civilians, but that doesn't mean that the Red Army didn't consider individual soldiers' lives expendable too."
Duh. Soldiers' lives are by definition expendable.
"During the early years of the war, the Red Army didn't bother with sophisticated infantry tactics, but simply attacked in massive infantry waves, most of which would die."
"As for atrocities, they were common on both sides on the eastern front. Germany was probably to blame for the incredible viciousness, because they started the entire war to gain living space towards the east. Space for Germans to live in, and therefore preferably not occupied by other people."
Again, atrocities were not even in the same order of magnitude. They were not comparable at all. It was not uncommon for Hitler's forces to exterminate the whole villages, for example, by burning everybody alive. Or to execute 100 civilians for each dead soldier.
And while Red Army did commit some crimes mass executions of civilians were never sanctioned by direct orders. And it's fairly obvious by looking at the casualties: Red Army - 10,600,000 (total) Civilians in the USSR - around 20,000,000. Wehrmacht - 4,300,000. Civilians in Germany - around 600000, including post-war mass relocations.
"Russia knowingly sacrificed millions of Russian lives."
BZZZT! Wrong. Losses of the Red Army were comparable to the German Wehrmacht losses. Most casualties in the USSR were _civilians_ killed by Nazis and there was little Stalin could do about it. A million civilians died in the besieged Leningrad alone, for example.
Again, Russian army was far from 'inhuman'. There were atrocities committed by it, of course, but they were not even in the same order of magnitude compared to Nazis. Just one small fact: rape was a crime in the Red Army and quite a few soldiers were summarily executed for it, while in the German army it was all but encouraged. Situation with POWs also was radically different, etc.
So equating the USSR and Nazi forces is hypocritical at best.
"First: Russia would have never held Moscow without massive western aid."
WTF?!?!?! Lend-lease help has just started coming in significant quantities by the time the Battle of Moscow was winding down (the First Protocol has been signed on the day of the German's offensive operation). Also, the total amount of lend-lease shipments was completely dwarfed by the native USSR production.
"Second: Nazi Germany was, in name and actions, a socialist state."
Dude, read about fascism. That's definitely NOT a socialistic state, it's an uber-capitalistic one. That's why Hitler loathed USSR.
"Third: Russia's army had been decapitated by Stalin's paranoid purges prior to WWII. They started the war dis-functional."
That is also not true. While Stalin did purge a lot of capable officers, the Red Army was far from being "decapitated".
"Without the United Kingdom and the United States bombing the ever living crap out of Germany day and night, the Germans would have had the fuel, aircraft, armor and super weapons to end the Soviet Union."
Not really. The impact of firebombing is somewhat overestimated.
"The Eastern Front was a body dump for both sides while the Atlantic Wall, the North African campaign and air war in the west ground down Germany's extra man power and material, just like the western front did in WW1 for Germany."
North Africa? LOL! It was minuscule by the scales of the battles on the Eastern Front. In the end the USSR was responsible for the 80% of German casualties in manpower and equipment.
First, USSR proposed creation of anti-Hitler coalition in 1938 and actually was ready to move against Germany.
And yes, you read it correctly - in 1938. England basically said: "Fuck you, USSR! Hitler is a pig and a nationalist, but he's a CAPITALISTIC pig and a nationalist. So go rot in hell." ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Munich_Agreement ).
The USSR parsed this reply correctly as: "You're on your own" and decided to make the best of the situation by securing access to Leningrad (Winter War), annexing some former provinces of the Russian Empire and stalling for time (Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact). And after the WWII began it became inevitable that USSR would have to intervene at some point.
Hitler then badly underestimated the Soviet army (which he called the "Colossus with feet of clay") partly because of the disastrous (for the USSR) Winter War. And that was what has caused the downfall of Nazi Germany. The USSR army was the main reason behind the Hitler's defeat.
There's no sense in a global currency which can be only used as a replacement for cash. One can use dollar (or euro) just as fine for that.
What makes dollar desirable is that it can be used for other purposes as well (that's why a significant portion of the global M3 is denominated in dollars). And gold can't replace it.
The barest minimum would be M2, and the total gold amount is a small fraction of that.
We can make this bet using gold (around 20 grams?) or any other freely convertible currency of your choice. I don't mind that at all.
10 years is too long a period. Anything can happen (President Palin, for example) so no rational prediction can be made.
I can make a conditional prediction (i.e. if the Fed keeps current policies, and there won't be any huge price shocks more, or WWIII etc.), but it'd be too easy to interpret it in anybody's favour.
Yup. That's why I've added that the total amount of currency is half of GDP. I.e. an equivalent of a one dollar note changes hands twice a year, on average.
With gold, this value will be close to 10000 times a year. A small 4 order of magnitude difference, I know.
"And this practice is exactly whey everything is falling apart right now. "
No, the overuse of this practice is the root of our current problems (which are slowly being solved, btw). It's the same problem as ever: too much of a good thing is a bad thing.
And yes, once the economy stops growing we'll have to rethink the economy. But so far it hasn't happened.
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Actually, /dev/urandom uses cryptographically secure random number generator. If you've used a reliable /dev/random seed then /dev/urandom is secure for all practical purposes.
Yep. Exactly, PSK on a large enterprise.
And THEN real security using IPSec. What's the point of protecting the wireless transmissions if anybody can plug anything into a nearest switch and sniff everything in their network segment?
4 years ago I've helped to manage a mesh WiFi network for a fairly large enterprise. It covered a large building with about 1000 people working simultaneously. It was first intended as a temporary network (they had to relocate quickly, because of a fire in their old building). But it worked well enough to become the main network.
Keys to success: low-power APs with WDS, and gigabit Ethernet trunks + switches with STP. We used WPA with pre-shared password for wireless security and then IPSec for IP-level security (it was used with the wired network earlier so no setup was required).
As far as I remember, an average access point served about 15 clients. We manually set all the access points to the lowest possible power level, but apart from that we did no additional setup.
So it's OK if I attach GPS to your car and then broadcast its location?
After all, it's not like I would be broadcasting your location. No, no! I'd broadcasting the location of the GPS receiver. Which just happens to be within a few meters of the driver's seat of you car.
Well, I use latitude too (to analyze and optimize my routes). But that's because Google has my explicit permission.
My bank has received a written agreement from me. Apple hasn't got it.
So, you do agree that coarse location data is not worthless and harmless?
So, you location is tracked with +-200m accuracy (which can be narrowed down to +-50m using careful analysis of the data). So it is OK now?
By the same token, do you agree to publish your GPS location track? After all, it's accurate to about 30 m.
Hm. My wireless bridge show that it has transferred 14Tb since February 12, that works out to about 2MB/sec of sustained transfer rate.
Works perfectly fine.
"If you build a device out of metal and that device is covered by a patent, and then I make a device using the same plans but I make mine out of wood, it uses the patented idea."
Nope. That depends on patent claims. If it reads like "a metal rod for pushing things" then your "cylindrical wooden apparatus for pushing things around" would NOT be infringing.
It gets more complex if the other patent just says "a rod for pushing things around". Then your invention might still be granted a patent (for example, if your idea of using wood allows to build lightweight rods) but you _might_ need to license another patent if you want to build wooden rods.
So next time you'll have a choice between two operators. Both of them will have 'mandatory arbitration' clause.
Sure, no pressure. You can always move to another country, right?
Such hacks are easily defeated by proper architecture. Most likely, automatic cars will have several levels of functions with firewalls between them. For example:
1) Low level - engine control.
2) Situational awareness - do not accelerate into pedestrians.
3) Global awareness - traffic patterns and navigation.
So hackers will only be able to influence the last level of the hierarchy. So they can route your car into an incorrect location, but they won't be able to drive it off the road.
"No doubt the nazis killed many Russian civilians, but that doesn't mean that the Red Army didn't consider individual soldiers' lives expendable too."
Duh. Soldiers' lives are by definition expendable.
"During the early years of the war, the Red Army didn't bother with sophisticated infantry tactics, but simply attacked in massive infantry waves, most of which would die."
And that is totally not true, "mass unarmed infantry waves" are pure fiction. While there might have been few such cases, such waves are not possible from military standpoint (I'm a trained military reserve officer, btw). http://www.militaryphotos.net/forums/showthread.php?122932-Soviet-quot-human-waves-quot - has a nice overview.
"As for atrocities, they were common on both sides on the eastern front. Germany was probably to blame for the incredible viciousness, because they started the entire war to gain living space towards the east. Space for Germans to live in, and therefore preferably not occupied by other people."
Again, atrocities were not even in the same order of magnitude. They were not comparable at all. It was not uncommon for Hitler's forces to exterminate the whole villages, for example, by burning everybody alive. Or to execute 100 civilians for each dead soldier.
And while Red Army did commit some crimes mass executions of civilians were never sanctioned by direct orders. And it's fairly obvious by looking at the casualties:
Red Army - 10,600,000 (total)
Civilians in the USSR - around 20,000,000.
Wehrmacht - 4,300,000.
Civilians in Germany - around 600000, including post-war mass relocations.
"Russia knowingly sacrificed millions of Russian lives."
BZZZT! Wrong. Losses of the Red Army were comparable to the German Wehrmacht losses. Most casualties in the USSR were _civilians_ killed by Nazis and there was little Stalin could do about it. A million civilians died in the besieged Leningrad alone, for example.
Again, Russian army was far from 'inhuman'. There were atrocities committed by it, of course, but they were not even in the same order of magnitude compared to Nazis. Just one small fact: rape was a crime in the Red Army and quite a few soldiers were summarily executed for it, while in the German army it was all but encouraged. Situation with POWs also was radically different, etc.
So equating the USSR and Nazi forces is hypocritical at best.
Nope. It means that solar power is about 4 times lower at the surface of Mars than on the Earth, but at the same time about 100 times deadlier.
The best of both worlds, you see!
Nope, not even close.
However, depicting Stalin as a complete monster is also stupid.
"First: Russia would have never held Moscow without massive western aid."
WTF?!?!?! Lend-lease help has just started coming in significant quantities by the time the Battle of Moscow was winding down (the First Protocol has been signed on the day of the German's offensive operation). Also, the total amount of lend-lease shipments was completely dwarfed by the native USSR production.
"Second: Nazi Germany was, in name and actions, a socialist state."
Dude, read about fascism. That's definitely NOT a socialistic state, it's an uber-capitalistic one. That's why Hitler loathed USSR.
"Third: Russia's army had been decapitated by Stalin's paranoid purges prior to WWII. They started the war dis-functional."
That is also not true. While Stalin did purge a lot of capable officers, the Red Army was far from being "decapitated".
"Without the United Kingdom and the United States bombing the ever living crap out of Germany day and night, the Germans would have had the fuel, aircraft, armor and super weapons to end the Soviet Union."
Not really. The impact of firebombing is somewhat overestimated.
"The Eastern Front was a body dump for both sides while the Atlantic Wall, the North African campaign and air war in the west ground down Germany's extra man power and material, just like the western front did in WW1 for Germany."
North Africa? LOL! It was minuscule by the scales of the battles on the Eastern Front. In the end the USSR was responsible for the 80% of German casualties in manpower and equipment.
Read and weep: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Front_(World_War_II)
Your knowledge of history is abysmal.
First, USSR proposed creation of anti-Hitler coalition in 1938 and actually was ready to move against Germany.
And yes, you read it correctly - in 1938. England basically said: "Fuck you, USSR! Hitler is a pig and a nationalist, but he's a CAPITALISTIC pig and a nationalist. So go rot in hell." ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Munich_Agreement ).
The USSR parsed this reply correctly as: "You're on your own" and decided to make the best of the situation by securing access to Leningrad (Winter War), annexing some former provinces of the Russian Empire and stalling for time (Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact). And after the WWII began it became inevitable that USSR would have to intervene at some point.
Hitler then badly underestimated the Soviet army (which he called the "Colossus with feet of clay") partly because of the disastrous (for the USSR) Winter War. And that was what has caused the downfall of Nazi Germany. The USSR army was the main reason behind the Hitler's defeat.
They were. I remember I saw a high-end touchscreen phone on CeBIT back in 2003. It looked a bit like iPhone, though it used a stylus.
There's no sense in a global currency which can be only used as a replacement for cash. One can use dollar (or euro) just as fine for that.
What makes dollar desirable is that it can be used for other purposes as well (that's why a significant portion of the global M3 is denominated in dollars). And gold can't replace it.
The barest minimum would be M2, and the total gold amount is a small fraction of that.
M0 is only physical currency (i.e. paper money). That's definitely not enough, since it's a small fraction of the total amount (M3).
And you'll have to replace M3, not M0.
No. The world has a GROWING pool of labour with more and more efficient utilisation of existing resources.
Once the growth decisively stops, we can talk again.
We can make this bet using gold (around 20 grams?) or any other freely convertible currency of your choice. I don't mind that at all.
10 years is too long a period. Anything can happen (President Palin, for example) so no rational prediction can be made.
I can make a conditional prediction (i.e. if the Fed keeps current policies, and there won't be any huge price shocks more, or WWIII etc.), but it'd be too easy to interpret it in anybody's favour.
Yup. That's why I've added that the total amount of currency is half of GDP. I.e. an equivalent of a one dollar note changes hands twice a year, on average.
With gold, this value will be close to 10000 times a year. A small 4 order of magnitude difference, I know.
"And this practice is exactly whey everything is falling apart right now. "
No, the overuse of this practice is the root of our current problems (which are slowly being solved, btw). It's the same problem as ever: too much of a good thing is a bad thing.
And yes, once the economy stops growing we'll have to rethink the economy. But so far it hasn't happened.