If computers are made more expensive it only means that everyone with any given bugdet will have to buy a less efficient one, which in turns means longer computations, ergo more power usage. More power means more oil and its associated problems like the greenhouse effect, wars, polution, poverty, etc. Isn't it just counterproductive to use more oil and produce more toxic waste that escapes to the atmosphere forever in order to solve a problem of a "waste" in the form of self-contained expensive hardware which can always find a second-hand market in the developing areas? Computers are not like cars. A CPU that has been working for ten years is unlikely to stop working any time soon and what's more important is that until it breaks it works just as well as when it was new. What exactly is the point of this new legislation if not a new way to add another hidden tax?
It is quite possible, though not very easy, to do, and there are already many excellent tips posted in this thread so I will not repeat them. What nobody seems to be talking about, though, is that you have to be aware of the gotchas of any technology you are going to use. Wireless security is much different than wierd, because your adversary only needs a $50 laptop and Airsnort (so called "war driving") instead of much much more expensive hardware needed to intercept wired communication especially in a shielded medium like STP for Ethernet. The security of your systems is something that you have to design before you do anything else. You cannot just say: "I'll add security later." That's why it is important to understand how the systems in question really work. Good luck.
Why does Slashdot always post those annoying "reg. required" links? Not everyone is willing to give up privacy, waste time and get spam just to read a stupid article. Here's a Google News link. Enjoy.
It is completely useless, just as any other authentication relying on sending data that is not secret. This is really getting old... Ley me quote a 1998 article on biometrics by Bruce Schneier:
Biometrics are seductive: you are your key. Your voiceprint unlocks the door of your house. Your retinal scan lets you in the corporate offices. Your thumbprint logs you on to your computer. Unfortunately, the reality of biometrics isn't that simple.
Biometrics are the oldest form of identification. Dogs have distinctive barks. Cats spray. Humans recognise each other's faces. On the telephone, your voice identifies you as the person on the line. On a paper contract, your signature identifies you as the person who signed it. Your photograph identifies you as the person who owns a particular passport.
What makes biometrics useful for many of these applications is that they can be stored in a database. Alice's voice only works as a biometric identification on the telephone if you already know who she is; if she is a stranger, it doesn't help. It's the same with Alice's handwriting; you can recognize it only if you already know it. To solve this problem, banks keep signature cards on file. Alice signs her name on a card, and it is stored in the bank (the bank needs to maintain its secure perimeter in order for this to work right). When Alice signs a check, the bank verifies Alice's signature against the stored signature to ensure that the check is valid.
There are a bunch of different biometrics. I've mentioned handwriting, voiceprints, and face recognition. There are also hand geometry, fingerprints, retinal scans, DNA, typing patterns, signature geometry (not just the look of the signature, but the pen pressure, signature speed, etc.), and others. The technologies behind some of them are more reliable than others, and they'll all improve.
"Improve" means two different things. First, it means that the system will not incorrectly identify an impostor as Alice. The whole point of the biometric is to prove that Alice is Alice, so if an impostor can successfully fool the system it isn't working very well. This is called a false positive. Second, "improve" means that the system will not incorrectly identify Alice as an impostor. Again, the point of the biometric is to prove that Alice is Alice, and if Alice can't convince the system that she is her then it's not working very well, either. This is called a false negative. In general, you can tune a biometric system to err on the side of a false positive or a false negative.
Biometrics are great because they are really hard to forge: it's hard to put a false fingerprint on your finger, or make your retina look like someone else's. Some people can mimic others' voices, and Hollywood can make people's faces look like someone else, but these are specialized or expensive skills. When you see someone sign his name, you generally know it is him and not someone else.
Biometrics are lousy because they are so easy to forge: it's easy to steal a biometric after the measurement is taken. In all of the applications discussed above, the verifier needs to verify not only that the biometric is accurate but that it has been input correctly. Imagine a remote system that uses face recognition as a biometric. "In order to gain authorization, take a Polaroid picture of yourself and mail it in. We'll compare the picture with the one we have in file." What are the attacks here?
Easy. To masquerade as Alice, take a Polaroid picture of her when she's not looking. Then, at some later date, use it to fool the system. This attack works because while it is hard to make your face look like Alice's, it's easy to get a picture of Alice's face. And since the system does not verify that the picture is of your face, only that it matches the picture of Alice's face on file, we can fool it.
Similarly, we can fool a signature biometric using a photocopier or a fa
Use Bruce Schneier's Password Safe if you cannot remember passwords, but saying that passwords are useless when they are hard to guess because they are hard to remember, so we should use no passwords at all so there won't be anything to guess in the first place is the most stupid thing I have ever heard. If not using secrets that people can remember than what? Biometrics? Ohplease...
From the article: "79 percent of people questioned on the streets of London revealed such desirable security-sensitive data as mother's maiden name and birth date." Really? People revealed such secrets as their birth date? Let us all stop using passwords then! This is just laughable.
This is very reassuring to see that software patents nightmare will most likely never happen in European Union where politicians seem to be concerned more with public good than with lobbying, which probably will lead to their abolishment in the United States as well, because American programmers will never agree to be left behind the whole Western civilization even facing quite different priorities of politicians on their side of the pond. This is a great time to sign this letter and start sending snail mail letters to these addresses. If you know of any other place where people can easily voice their opinion on those issues in a way that actual politicians will see them, please post them here. This is a truly great news, no matter if you are a free software believer, an open source pragmatist, or a proprietary zealot. In the end, every programmer has to face the same problems with software patents. It's wonderful to see a bright future and it's quote amazing to see honest politicians acting in the best interest of Their People.
Before we all start to scream bloody murder this, fascist law that, I would like to say that this kid got what he deserved. He is not a victim here. The victim is a teacher whose privacy was violated and the attorney deserves our support this time. This case is completely unlike the one of DVD John or Kevin Mitnick. The 180 days in jail is nothing in this case. So please, let's stop our knee-jerk reactions and congratulate the law enforcement just once when they in fact have done a good job. No need to panic here, no need to remind about 1984 or the Third Reich, because this kid was the one who was spying on his teacher and who belongs in jail. This story is only about "Your Rights Online" because your rights could be as easily violated like the rights of that teacher were violated by his student. We need to be protected from spies, be them MIAA, NSA or our students.
Just wonderful. The sky was about the only place without ads. Fortunately, there already is an ad blocker for this thing. But how long before there is no way to raise children without corporate brainwashing? How is it any different than the omnipresent propaganda in Soviet Russia? Is it a new world ala 1984, only with greedy corporations instead of violent regimes? If so, than how will the world look like after few decades? This is not a good news and I, for one, will always boycott such an intrusive form of advertisement which is even far worse than spam.
You mutter about gay robot sex in your sleep?
Hmm...
I may mutter about sex in general.
For example, I am probably more likely to mutter
something like "mmm... sex... I want sex... oh yeah..." than "mmm... I want heterosexual human-human penile-vaginal intercourse," am I not?
Then again, if a robot can feel lust in the classical sense, one would assume it would have a standard of attractiveness
Oh, right, so I'm totally safe then.
Thanks a lot.
That's exactly what I need. A robot whose main imperative is lust would be a perfect companion for life.
(My God! He never took middle school hygiene. He never saw the propaganda film.)
But seriously, having a female robot would be great, but what about the dangers of having male robots? What is a guarantee that my backdoor wouldn't be vulnerable to his exploit, so to speak? Is that something that could stop a manbot if he thinks I am a fembot? Not that I dress like one, but speaking strictly hypothetically, what safety measures should we need? Are the Three Laws really enough to keep us safe? What, e.g., if I mutter something about sex while I sleep and the robot takes it as an order? This is a promising technology, but I don't think I feel entirely comfortable with its unforeseen implications just yet. Let's see what happens when those ideas go into production. It is too early to predict anything right now.
Will Apple follow IBM and Sun?
Most of their patents are hardware, but they do have some software patents.
Hardware? So what? That didn't stop IBM, did it? I mean, seriously, how more "hardware" can you get than donating a patent for Tamper proof set screw, "A device for preventing unauthorized access to a rotating shaft," for use by open source software?
Wait a second, I've just read the list of those 500 IBM's patents, and there is also one for
Methods and apparatus for exploiting virtual buffers! Don't use it! It's a trap!!!
This is an interesting news, and I have some mixed feelings. I hate it, I love it, and I don't care. I hate is as a Perl hacker. I love it as a Parrot enthusiast. And I don't care as a cellphone purist. To be more specific, as a Perl hacker I hate it because I am jealous. As a Parrot enthusiast I love it because what's good for my Python-using friends is also good for Perl in the long run. As a cellphone purist, I don't care because I have just bought a new Nokia 2300 which is already too bloated for my purist taste. All in all, this is an interesting news, even if not surprising. I look forward to read about having Parrot VM available on cell phones one day, so we could finally have an efficient register-based VM suitable for optimal execution of programs written in moderen dynamic languages and be free from the JVM mistakes legacy. This in an important goal.
First of all, this book seems like a nice rewrite of on-line documentation. It is even a good idea in principle, because building a database driven site with PHP and MySQL is indeed very quick, almost as quick as using Perl and SQLite, but as with every RDBMS there are gotchas. It is true for MySQL, true for PostgreSQL, true for SQLite and even for Oracle, because just like no system is secure, no database is perfect. You always have to know the gotchas to work around them, which is especially important when you want to write a portable database-independent application, which is always a good idea. Unfortunately, this book lacks many important informations about those issues, as it also lacks essential introduction to relational algebra, set theory and predicate calculus, which are important to understand the relational model and to know what the relational database is all about. Without such background, people tend to confuse the relational model with a SQL interface to the filesystem, or an object store, so the lack of such an introduction is the most important flaw of that book. Other than that, it is quite a nice rewrite of many HOWTOs available on-line, and it is always easier and quicker to read one book than to hunt countless websites. All in all, a nice book.
If you have written code that works better than the open source code you have tried, but you'd rather use said open source code, isn't it obvious that you should send some patches? That's how open source works, you know.
Looks like Eric finally accepted the job offer from Microsoft.
I don't think so. He stepped aside to get some more time to work in his projects like: fetchmail, and... hm... and...yeah.
Why does everyone keep forgetting about the most important project? I've heard that Eric went to Thailand to finally get some empirical data for his HOWTO.
Haven't you ever seen two dogs meeting in the street? The first thing they do is to smell each other's ass. That's because a dog's ass has an absolutely wonderful smell! It must be true, how could a hundred million dogs be wrong?
They are in fact not smelling their arses but their genitals which indeed have an absolutely wonderful smell for dogs just like human genitals have an equally wonderful smell for humans. (Or so I've read.) The anus is being smelled as a side effect and its smell doesn't differ between both sexes so it is not very helpful as a guide to copulation. (Dogs don't usually make anal sex.)
This is how we got the widespread misuse of words/phrases like "irony", "it begs the question",...
Strict meanings of both irony and begging the question have been used for millennia--literally, for they both originated in ancient Greece--so I wouldn't exactly call them gray areas. But while the (re)definition of "irony" one is more familiar with might indeed be a question of whether one prefers texts written by Plato or Alanis Morissette, copyright infringement is a completely different matter. Copyright infringement is by definition a violation of copyright law which is not a property law. Violating copyright is not theft because duplicating data is not appropriation of any property, much less a dishonest appropriation of property belonging to someone else with the intention of permanently depriving the other of said property. The key word here is "depriving," for theft is wrong not because the thief gets something without paying (the real goal of any theft), but because the victim no longer has that something (a side effect of every theft)--this is crucial. Furthermore, the copyright law was meant to protect authors from publishers, not from readers so reading a book without paying for the right to read or listening to music without paying for the right to listen is not only not theft, but not even a copyright infringment. The "copy-" in "copyright" is rather unfortunate, and should it have been called "publishing rights" there would be much less confusion today when "copying" is something we must do in order to play any kind of digital media.
So, copyright infringement is not theft by any stretch of imagination. Nor is it piracy, for that matter, because it has very little to do with robbing or plundering at sea without a commission from a recognised sovereign nation, and quite frankly I have no idea why has that word been chosen in the first place. I know that in the "Don't Copy That Floppy" era, writing "piracy is a crime"--which is true, even if copying floppies is not--on BSA propaganda posters must have had a strong influence on people, but why using piracy and not just theft?
My point is that--unlike irony--copyright infringment, theft and piracy, as well as trade secrets and patents, are all very strictly defined by law in any given jurisdiction and it is impossible to confuse them without clear malicious intents. This is not a question of definition or preference, but a matter of fact. So I fully agree with your point, but I wouldn't use the same examples.
Slashdot Mirror
If computers are made more expensive it only means that everyone with any given bugdet will have to buy a less efficient one, which in turns means longer computations, ergo more power usage. More power means more oil and its associated problems like the greenhouse effect, wars, polution, poverty, etc. Isn't it just counterproductive to use more oil and produce more toxic waste that escapes to the atmosphere forever in order to solve a problem of a "waste" in the form of self-contained expensive hardware which can always find a second-hand market in the developing areas? Computers are not like cars. A CPU that has been working for ten years is unlikely to stop working any time soon and what's more important is that until it breaks it works just as well as when it was new. What exactly is the point of this new legislation if not a new way to add another hidden tax?
It was only a (dark) matter of (space) time.
It is quite possible, though not very easy, to do, and there are already many excellent tips posted in this thread so I will not repeat them. What nobody seems to be talking about, though, is that you have to be aware of the gotchas of any technology you are going to use. Wireless security is much different than wierd, because your adversary only needs a $50 laptop and Airsnort (so called "war driving") instead of much much more expensive hardware needed to intercept wired communication especially in a shielded medium like STP for Ethernet. The security of your systems is something that you have to design before you do anything else. You cannot just say: "I'll add security later." That's why it is important to understand how the systems in question really work. Good luck.
Why does Slashdot always post those annoying "reg. required" links? Not everyone is willing to give up privacy, waste time and get spam just to read a stupid article. Here's a Google News link. Enjoy.
Use Bruce Schneier's Password Safe if you cannot remember passwords, but saying that passwords are useless when they are hard to guess because they are hard to remember, so we should use no passwords at all so there won't be anything to guess in the first place is the most stupid thing I have ever heard. If not using secrets that people can remember than what? Biometrics? Oh please... From the article: "79 percent of people questioned on the streets of London revealed such desirable security-sensitive data as mother's maiden name and birth date." Really? People revealed such secrets as their birth date? Let us all stop using passwords then! This is just laughable.
slashdotters are allowed to play as much as they like.
This is very reassuring to see that software patents nightmare will most likely never happen in European Union where politicians seem to be concerned more with public good than with lobbying, which probably will lead to their abolishment in the United States as well, because American programmers will never agree to be left behind the whole Western civilization even facing quite different priorities of politicians on their side of the pond. This is a great time to sign this letter and start sending snail mail letters to these addresses. If you know of any other place where people can easily voice their opinion on those issues in a way that actual politicians will see them, please post them here. This is a truly great news, no matter if you are a free software believer, an open source pragmatist, or a proprietary zealot. In the end, every programmer has to face the same problems with software patents. It's wonderful to see a bright future and it's quote amazing to see honest politicians acting in the best interest of Their People.
Before we all start to scream bloody murder this, fascist law that, I would like to say that this kid got what he deserved. He is not a victim here. The victim is a teacher whose privacy was violated and the attorney deserves our support this time. This case is completely unlike the one of DVD John or Kevin Mitnick. The 180 days in jail is nothing in this case. So please, let's stop our knee-jerk reactions and congratulate the law enforcement just once when they in fact have done a good job. No need to panic here, no need to remind about 1984 or the Third Reich, because this kid was the one who was spying on his teacher and who belongs in jail. This story is only about "Your Rights Online" because your rights could be as easily violated like the rights of that teacher were violated by his student. We need to be protected from spies, be them MIAA, NSA or our students.
Just wonderful. The sky was about the only place without ads. Fortunately, there already is an ad blocker for this thing. But how long before there is no way to raise children without corporate brainwashing? How is it any different than the omnipresent propaganda in Soviet Russia? Is it a new world ala 1984, only with greedy corporations instead of violent regimes? If so, than how will the world look like after few decades? This is not a good news and I, for one, will always boycott such an intrusive form of advertisement which is even far worse than spam.
I may mutter about sex in general. For example, I am probably more likely to mutter something like "mmm... sex... I want sex... oh yeah..." than "mmm... I want heterosexual human-human penile-vaginal intercourse," am I not?
Oh, right, so I'm totally safe then. Thanks a lot.
That's exactly what I need. A robot whose main imperative is lust would be a perfect companion for life. (My God! He never took middle school hygiene. He never saw the propaganda film.) But seriously, having a female robot would be great, but what about the dangers of having male robots? What is a guarantee that my backdoor wouldn't be vulnerable to his exploit, so to speak? Is that something that could stop a manbot if he thinks I am a fembot? Not that I dress like one, but speaking strictly hypothetically, what safety measures should we need? Are the Three Laws really enough to keep us safe? What, e.g., if I mutter something about sex while I sleep and the robot takes it as an order? This is a promising technology, but I don't think I feel entirely comfortable with its unforeseen implications just yet. Let's see what happens when those ideas go into production. It is too early to predict anything right now.
Hardware? So what? That didn't stop IBM, did it? I mean, seriously, how more "hardware" can you get than donating a patent for Tamper proof set screw, "A device for preventing unauthorized access to a rotating shaft," for use by open source software? Wait a second, I've just read the list of those 500 IBM's patents, and there is also one for Methods and apparatus for exploiting virtual buffers! Don't use it! It's a trap!!!
This is an interesting news, and I have some mixed feelings. I hate it, I love it, and I don't care. I hate is as a Perl hacker. I love it as a Parrot enthusiast. And I don't care as a cellphone purist. To be more specific, as a Perl hacker I hate it because I am jealous. As a Parrot enthusiast I love it because what's good for my Python-using friends is also good for Perl in the long run. As a cellphone purist, I don't care because I have just bought a new Nokia 2300 which is already too bloated for my purist taste. All in all, this is an interesting news, even if not surprising. I look forward to read about having Parrot VM available on cell phones one day, so we could finally have an efficient register-based VM suitable for optimal execution of programs written in moderen dynamic languages and be free from the JVM mistakes legacy. This in an important goal.
First of all, this book seems like a nice rewrite of on-line documentation. It is even a good idea in principle, because building a database driven site with PHP and MySQL is indeed very quick, almost as quick as using Perl and SQLite, but as with every RDBMS there are gotchas. It is true for MySQL, true for PostgreSQL, true for SQLite and even for Oracle, because just like no system is secure, no database is perfect. You always have to know the gotchas to work around them, which is especially important when you want to write a portable database-independent application, which is always a good idea. Unfortunately, this book lacks many important informations about those issues, as it also lacks essential introduction to relational algebra, set theory and predicate calculus, which are important to understand the relational model and to know what the relational database is all about. Without such background, people tend to confuse the relational model with a SQL interface to the filesystem, or an object store, so the lack of such an introduction is the most important flaw of that book. Other than that, it is quite a nice rewrite of many HOWTOs available on-line, and it is always easier and quicker to read one book than to hunt countless websites. All in all, a nice book.
If you have written code that works better than the open source code you have tried, but you'd rather use said open source code, isn't it obvious that you should send some patches? That's how open source works, you know.
Why does everyone keep forgetting about the most important project? I've heard that Eric went to Thailand to finally get some empirical data for his HOWTO.
Eric's Gun Nut Page: "Yes, I cheerfully refer to myself as a gun nut." -- Eric S. Raymond.
Are you sure? He seems nice.
They are in fact not smelling their arses but their genitals which indeed have an absolutely wonderful smell for dogs just like human genitals have an equally wonderful smell for humans. (Or so I've read.) The anus is being smelled as a side effect and its smell doesn't differ between both sexes so it is not very helpful as a guide to copulation. (Dogs don't usually make anal sex.)
Make up your mind. Either he's logic or isn't consistent.
I'm not sure what do you mean, and I don't really want to know...
Strict meanings of both irony and begging the question have been used for millennia--literally, for they both originated in ancient Greece--so I wouldn't exactly call them gray areas. But while the (re)definition of "irony" one is more familiar with might indeed be a question of whether one prefers texts written by Plato or Alanis Morissette, copyright infringement is a completely different matter. Copyright infringement is by definition a violation of copyright law which is not a property law. Violating copyright is not theft because duplicating data is not appropriation of any property, much less a dishonest appropriation of property belonging to someone else with the intention of permanently depriving the other of said property. The key word here is "depriving," for theft is wrong not because the thief gets something without paying (the real goal of any theft), but because the victim no longer has that something (a side effect of every theft)--this is crucial. Furthermore, the copyright law was meant to protect authors from publishers, not from readers so reading a book without paying for the right to read or listening to music without paying for the right to listen is not only not theft, but not even a copyright infringment. The "copy-" in "copyright" is rather unfortunate, and should it have been called "publishing rights" there would be much less confusion today when "copying" is something we must do in order to play any kind of digital media. So, copyright infringement is not theft by any stretch of imagination. Nor is it piracy, for that matter, because it has very little to do with robbing or plundering at sea without a commission from a recognised sovereign nation, and quite frankly I have no idea why has that word been chosen in the first place. I know that in the "Don't Copy That Floppy" era, writing "piracy is a crime"--which is true, even if copying floppies is not--on BSA propaganda posters must have had a strong influence on people, but why using piracy and not just theft? My point is that--unlike irony--copyright infringment, theft and piracy, as well as trade secrets and patents, are all very strictly defined by law in any given jurisdiction and it is impossible to confuse them without clear malicious intents. This is not a question of definition or preference, but a matter of fact. So I fully agree with your point, but I wouldn't use the same examples.
All of them? Simultaneously? With O(n) performance? Wow. Impressive.
Thanks a lot. I almost forgot this picture.