Handwriting Analysis....
Right up there with reading tea leaves and goat entrails.
Indeed.
Now analysis to verify for a court that this is the defendants handwriting yes or no,for example is a science.
This is known in forensics as questioned document examination, forensic document examination, document examination, or handwriting examination. This has nothing to to with graphology, the pseudoscience. See: Questioned document examination and Graphology articles on Wikipedia, and also see this post for more links.
In other words, graphology is BS and the people who analyzed it already had a preconceived notion about whose it was and made the appropriate BS analyses.
Graphology is just as laughable as astrology, acupuncture or homeopathy. Here's a nice experiment for your amusement: when you meet a "graphologist" who'd like to demonstrate her amazing "skills" to you, be sure to make an experiment using text copied from some newspaper, the same text written by all of the tested people who had no contact with the graphologist before and during the handwriting examination at all. Observing the graphologist's face when she doesn't have "side channels data" and no interaction with people to play with "cold reading" is a trully hilarious experience.
"This shape might sometimes mean that maybe some kind of a impatience... am I right?" "Just keep going, I don't want to disturb you!"
And the most funny thing is that unlike psychics they can't just make up some dumb excuses that they feel some disturbance of Force or that the Angels are scared by the camera, because they are supposed to be scientists. Looking at someone's writing you can usually tell the gender and age--the same I can guess reading someone's palm... Or foot... Or arse! Does it make me an arsologist?
And a comment to CmdrTaco: please add the Monty Python foot to the article because without it we look like a bunch of imbeciles. What next? Bill Gates tested by the lie detector and a story posted on science.slashdot.org? Please just add the foot. Thanks.
And don't forget it. You even swiped the title. For shame! But I beat you by 25 minutes.
This is a very strange feeling to read an earlier post with almost the same content and identical subject as mine. You will not feel the same way, because your post was earlier so you will never know whether I posted mine independently. I believe I have experienced something like this on Wikipedia having an edit conflict with someone who has made exactly the same edit as mine, at the same time. Truly frightening. I have only two explanations here: I was the one who really wrote the AC comment in question, and possibly the parent post as well (which would not be surprising considering the somewhat unusual conditions of my mind) or I might be not the only person here with such a brilliant sense of humour (much less plausible). In any case, the moderators should now moderate grandparent down as redundant and rightfully moderate the post linked in parent up, which they should have done in the first place, and which seems rather unlikely considering the fact that granparent post was moderated as Interesting twice. Please accept my sincere apologies, unless you are my alter ego, in which case please shut up, I need some sleep and the multiple personality disorder is really the last thing I need right now.
Maybe someday you'll grow up and have your OWN opinions...
"I plan on continuing my studies to a PhD in Physics, but first I need to get on my feet financially"
You should concentrate on getting your PhD first, even if that mean more debts, because having a PhD--especially in Physics but that doesn't really matter--you will be able to negotiate much higher rates than people with the same or better skills but with lower degrees. It will also mean that your work will most likely be more research-related, which is much more rewarding and indeed important than another so called Real World(TM) cubicle monkey. So don't even think about it, get your PhD first and then start getting some Real Money.(TM) I wish you the best luck.
The main thing I think that keeps Google ahead of everyone else is that they seem to be some nice folks.
Very true. Infortunately, people doesn't seem to be nice to Google. As an example let's take this "Google file system" from some time ago. As much as I am usually against frivolous lawsuits, in this case I really hoped Google had sued its authors and won. Why? Because this so called "file system" is a classical example of parasite which can only hurt Google. And for what? So its "developers" could have their project posted on Slashdot frontpage? So they could say "look, mom, how bloody 'leet' I am"? But no, Google didn't sue them, even though I strongly advised them to. They are nice even to people who violate them.
But the problem persists. What if one day someone writes a "file system" stealing storage from Slashdot, saving its files in the form of gigabyte first posts filled with goats.ex links and literally tons of uuencoded pornography? This is exactly the same, only much worse, because unlike Slashdot Google has much less intrusive advertisements and no bias and corporate agenda. From every greedy US corporation, Google is unquestionably the closest to being absolutely perfect. And how do we say "thank you"? By stealing their property? By advertising this pathetic thief "file system" on the front page of the most popular website on the north hemisphere?
I just want to remind you that I was strongly against it from the very beginning, explicitly voicing my concerns when it was a "hot" topic, only to get completely ignored by the entire community. But we cannot tolerate such a behaviour, I'm sorry. Google is not another IBM who didn't see anything wrong in helping build concentration camps or Cisco who is perfectly comfortable with building the largest machines of censorship and oppression in the history of human kind.
Google, unlike any other company, is trying to do what is best for us. They deserve our gratefulness and respect. The existence of script kiddies shamefully exploiting Google's services for their own miserable advantage is a precedence not only insulting to our intelligence but a one actually harmful for us in the long run, because that could possibly mean the end of fantastic projects from Google, when they eventually stop to think and inevitably say: "Hey, what's the point of doing no evil? What's the point of being nice guys if people just want to steal from us? Maybe that pop-up pornography ads and paid search results placement weren't such a bad idea after all?" I know I certainly would.
Sorry for a long rant. I just love Google and I hate people who hurt it. I think it is great that Google is still ahead. The question is: how long will they survive in the world of greedy scums like M$N, AO£ and ¥ahoo? Is there a place for nice guys in the world ruled by greedy bastards? I certainly hope so.
The thing that really anoys me about the PC form factor is the monitor cable. They are all way to thick and clunky and they only carry the monitor signal. I want sound, Usb and firewire to all plug into the same port, plus the monitor is probably a better site for the wifi antenae. What we really need is to get rid of the monitor cable altogether and have a fibre optic like they use for dolby digital.
Apple has some nice LCD monitors with the features you describe: they are 17- and 20-inch, they have wifi antennas, sound input and output, USB, FireWire and Ethernet ports, DVD burners... OK, let's just face it: PCs suck.
If I could have all the peripheral plug in points built into the base of the monitor I don't much care what the box looks like. It can go in a cupboard.
Or it can not even exist... Seriously, I think I'm going to buy one of those babies.
"MIT Media Lab founder Nicholas Negroponte has a plan to build a $100 PC [...] which is supposedly going to have a 14-inch color screen and run on Linux"
It turns out that Steve Ballmer was right. A $100 PC will indeed reduce Windows piracy, by running Linux. I'm sure Ballmer is very happy about this new project fulfilling his prophecy. This is a very good news for the developing developing developing world.
From the article: "Additional thoughts: Due to size restrictions, fitting a CD-ROM drive in the mini enclosure would be impossible with this motherboard. Luckily, this motherboard supports pretty much every external bootable device, including bootable CD-ROM and USB thumb drives."
You should not only fit a CD-ROM, but actually a DVD-RW combo. In other words, you have failed to fit a PC in Mac Mini, so comparing its speed or price is quite pointless. I hate to say it as a PC user, but the result of this experiment is clear: Mac: 1, PC: 0.
I will definitely miss that loading time (of approx. 2 minutes) of Acrobat Reater and that invaluable information on those 4573 (or something) patents that they have for one document reader software!
Use Ghostscript then. The GSview graphical interface is available for Windows, OS/2 and Linux (though I personally prefer gv there). It supports PDF and Postscript formats (PS, EPS, etc.), and can display, print and easily convert between them, and even convert them to raster formats, so it is actually much more useful than Acrobat Reader, while being much less bloated at the same time. Ghostscript and GSview are always present on my CDs with useful Windows software, along with OpenOffice.org (which can save as PDF, nota bene), AbiWord, Firefox, ClamWin and PuTTY, to name just a few. If you work with serious printing, Ghostscript is a must.
Thanks. Now I feel like some kind of a sucker with my three-button 2d-scrollball mouse with eight modification keys on the keyboard to use EMACS. But isn't it true that using an input device that is artificially simple induces artificial complexity in all of the input entered using that device? You cannot just sweep the complexity under the carpet, can you? Sure, using this or this is certainly easier than using this, but is it equally rewarding once you master it? Isn't it just a question of beginners vs. experts emphasis?
From Bruce Schneier"Recent data from our honeynet sensor grid reveals that the average life expectancy to compromise for an unpatched Linux system has increased from 72 hours to 3 months. This means that a unpatched Linux system with commonly used configurations (such as server builds of RedHat 9.0 or Suse 6.2) have an online mean life expectancy of 3 months before being successfully compromised." I think the term is not "more secure" but "less vulnerable".
Next paragraph from the article you quote: "It's also important to remember that this paper focuses on vulnerable systems. The Honeynet researchers deployed almost 20 vulnerable systems to monitor hacker tactics, and found that no one was hacking the systems. That's the real story: the hackers aren't bothering with Linux. Two years ago, a vulnerable Linux system would be hacked in less than three days; now it takes three months." [emphasis added] This is irrelevant to your argument. It shows that Linux is less likely to be targetted, not that it is more secure or less vulnerable, but only less popular.
"We all know that OSRM has come out to offer insurance against intellectual property claims for open source software. Recently, we've seen IBM open up 500 patents and SUN up the ante with 1600. But all of these moves are targeted at F/OSS software."
Of course those are targetted at free software, because free software is the main force opposing software patents. Check out who is giving their patents to free software, and then check out who is the main pusher of software patents in EU. What we have to realise is that IBM is not giving us patents just because IBM is nice. IBM wants us to shut up while it is lobbying for software patents in the European Union. Hopefully, we are not fools, and we will see the big picture and understand that it is harmful in the long run. And quite frankly it is harmful for both proprietary and free software developers. It is dangerous for anyone who cannot afford an army of lawyers. IBM will be safe with its proprietary software and with its free software, but your mom and pop's software shop will be always vulnerable. Please people, let's not wet our pants because IBM gave us some miserable patents to keep us quiet. Anyone who remembers WW2 knows that this is hardly a company that does not evil, like Google. Let's wait and see what those patents will give us in the countries that have software patents, and meanwhile lobby against such patents in the countries that don't, as hard as we possibly can. It's also a good idea to sign the Thank you, Poland letter to show our support. There is more info on FSF website. The politicians have to know what we want, and they will do what we want, because they want to get reelected. This is the most important thing to understand in politics. "Hey, look, we've got 50000 letters from around the world from people who are strongly against software patents. We'll have have a lot of support and good publicity if we vote against software patents. Screw IBM." This is how it works, folks. It's time to learn it and it's time to start acting. Don't even waste your time on reading those patents, just lobby against them even if those particular patents are ours (with strings attached, of course), because it doesn't mean that we'll get every IBM's and Sun's patents in the future, and the future is what we need to worry about.
You know, back in my day, they didn't have magnets for keeping razors sharp - the fad back then was using a small pyramid (I kid thee not). This pyramid would not only sharpen razor blades, it also gave water stored in it miraculous healing properties...
That's nothing! Back in my day, when we wanted miraculous healing properties of water, we used radium ore: "By the patented composition of highly selected and scientifically compounded radium ores of which the Revigator is made, this lost element is perpetually restored to all drinking water placed therein." We drank radioactive water, we ate radioactive drugs and we wore radioactive cotton--we were that cool.
When I read "fake science" I thought that they might be after Randi's million but then when I read the conference agenda I thought that they were much less exciting than most of applicants, especially thosetwo and I was like, wtf? Is this story boring or what? And then I was enlightened. Jon Stewart's media criticism indeed applies, even if it is completely irrelevant here, but they in fact are "hurting [the world]," for their frivolous greedy publicity stunts happenings might indeed have a real influence on people and their respective behaviour. Some people might think "hey, the global worning is not such a big deal after all, why not buy another ugly GM SUV monster instead of a hybrid Honda Civic?" which in turn will make the climate even warmer. The question is, why would anyone want to increase the temperature of the planet? It doesn't seem to make any sense, does it? Could that be only a side effect of billions to be made selling oil? Were the recent decisions on the Middle East only a beginning of a bigger plan? Only time will tell.
It sux to talk about it like this, especially considering I normally think in very logical secure steps. I've never been rooted before, and feel violated.
Don't worry, mate.
We all feel that way for the first time.
G'day.
Every file that is written to an encrypted folder by User A has a private encryption key generated for it. That private encryption key is then encrypted with User A's public key and every designed Encrypted Data Recovery Agent's public key. Then either User A or any such recovery agent's private key can then decrypt the file.
Of course, MS just lets lay users assume their "encrypted" files are private.
They (and they employers) also probably assume that when their key is lost then all of their work is not lost forever. You are right that Microsoft's encryption is a joke, but this is not a good example. What you have described is not a flaw per se, but a design decision. In fact, that is the only way to restore the encrypted data when the user's key is lost. On the other hand, the RC4 flaw is about reusing the same keystream in stream ciphers, which is an inexcusable amateur mistake and shows a level of incompetence just plainly laughable in the case of the largest software giant on the planet. Let me quote Bruce Schneier on Microsoft RC4 Flaw:
One of the most important rules of stream ciphers is to never use the same keystream to encrypt two different documents. If someone does, you can break the encryption by XORing the two ciphertext streams together. The keystream drops out, and you end up with plaintext XORed with plaintext -- and you can easily recover the two plaintexts using letter frequency analysis and other basic techniques.
It's an amateur crypto mistake. The easy way to prevent this attack is to use a unique initialization vector (IV) in addition to the key whenever you encrypt a document.
Microsoft uses the RC4 stream cipher in both Word and Excel. And they make this mistake. Hongjun Wu has details (link is a PDF).
In this report, we point out a serious security flaw in Microsoft Word and Excel. The stream cipher RC4 [9] with key length up to 128 bits is used in Microsoft Word and Excel to protect the documents. But when an encrypted document gets modified and saved, the initialization vector remains the same and thus the same keystream generated from RC4 is applied to encrypt the different versions of that document. The consequence is disastrous since a lot of information of the document could be recovered easily.
This isn't new. Microsoft made the same mistake in 1999 with RC4 in WinNT Syskey. Five years later, Microsoft has the same flaw in other products.
As you can see, Microsoft's crypto is a joke indeed. It is an old, unfunny joke that they keep repeating ad nauseam. But it is about a much more important incompetence than what you have noticed. As some people say: "When it comes to security, it's always Amateur Hour in Redmond." Sadly, this has been true forever. When people invest in Microsoft's security they always say "maybe this time they got it right, I'm sure." This is not without a reason.
If you want to read about more technical details and social implications of the RC4 flaw, I highly recommend starting from Bruce Schneier on Security: Microsoft RC4 Flaw (January 18, 2005). There are a lot of informative links and interesting comments there.
This is an important moment
to ask ourselves: do we have the right to play, or even to be gods themselves? Have we already crossed the line? Where is that line? What are the consequences, both physical and ethical, to our bodies and souls, if we can create life? Does it mean that we can not only create souls, but in fact design completely new kinds of souls, new races of people? This is both fascinating and frightening. Could the price for being gods be ethernal damnation? This seems highly unlikely, but can we positively eliminate that possibility. What could that mean to humanity as we know it? So many questions, so little answers... During the next few decades it should be clear whether we as humanity have made the most disastrous mistake in the history of human kind, or the greatest achievement since the creation of the universe. I only hope we will live long enough to understand it. I am really looking forward to know answers to the most important questions of our existance, power, purpose and meaning. Fascinating breakthrough.
Slashdot Mirror
Sounds like a good deal. Since I abandoned M$N in favour of AO£ and ¥ahoo, I can live without the $. (The character, I mean.) Where do I sign up?
Indeed.
This is known in forensics as questioned document examination, forensic document examination, document examination, or handwriting examination. This has nothing to to with graphology, the pseudoscience. See: Questioned document examination and Graphology articles on Wikipedia, and also see this post for more links.
Graphology is just as laughable as astrology, acupuncture or homeopathy. Here's a nice experiment for your amusement: when you meet a "graphologist" who'd like to demonstrate her amazing "skills" to you, be sure to make an experiment using text copied from some newspaper, the same text written by all of the tested people who had no contact with the graphologist before and during the handwriting examination at all. Observing the graphologist's face when she doesn't have "side channels data" and no interaction with people to play with "cold reading" is a trully hilarious experience.
"This shape might sometimes mean that maybe some kind of a impatience... am I right?"
"Just keep going, I don't want to disturb you!"
And the most funny thing is that unlike psychics they can't just make up some dumb excuses that they feel some disturbance of Force or that the Angels are scared by the camera, because they are supposed to be scientists. Looking at someone's writing you can usually tell the gender and age--the same I can guess reading someone's palm... Or foot... Or arse! Does it make me an arsologist?
For more interesting informations read: Wikipedia article on graphology, James Randi's comments on graphology (by The Amazing Randi of JREF who offers "a one-million-dollar prize to anyone who can show, under proper observing conditions, evidence of any paranormal, supernatural, or occult power or event"), graphology in the Skeptic's Dictionary by Robert T. Carroll, PhD, and of course the excellent Quackwatch paper How Graphology Fools People by Barry L. Beyerstein, PhD. This is not the first time we can laugh at psedoscientific morons on Slashdot thanks to The Amazing Randi.
And a comment to CmdrTaco: please add the Monty Python foot to the article because without it we look like a bunch of imbeciles. What next? Bill Gates tested by the lie detector and a story posted on science.slashdot.org? Please just add the foot. Thanks.
This is a very strange feeling to read an earlier post with almost the same content and identical subject as mine. You will not feel the same way, because your post was earlier so you will never know whether I posted mine independently. I believe I have experienced something like this on Wikipedia having an edit conflict with someone who has made exactly the same edit as mine, at the same time. Truly frightening. I have only two explanations here: I was the one who really wrote the AC comment in question, and possibly the parent post as well (which would not be surprising considering the somewhat unusual conditions of my mind) or I might be not the only person here with such a brilliant sense of humour (much less plausible). In any case, the moderators should now moderate grandparent down as redundant and rightfully moderate the post linked in parent up, which they should have done in the first place, and which seems rather unlikely considering the fact that granparent post was moderated as Interesting twice. Please accept my sincere apologies, unless you are my alter ego, in which case please shut up, I need some sleep and the multiple personality disorder is really the last thing I need right now.
We can only hope.
"I plan on continuing my studies to a PhD in Physics, but first I need to get on my feet financially"
You should concentrate on getting your PhD first, even if that mean more debts, because having a PhD--especially in Physics but that doesn't really matter--you will be able to negotiate much higher rates than people with the same or better skills but with lower degrees. It will also mean that your work will most likely be more research-related, which is much more rewarding and indeed important than another so called Real World(TM) cubicle monkey. So don't even think about it, get your PhD first and then start getting some Real Money.(TM) I wish you the best luck.
Very true. Infortunately, people doesn't seem to be nice to Google. As an example let's take this "Google file system" from some time ago. As much as I am usually against frivolous lawsuits, in this case I really hoped Google had sued its authors and won. Why? Because this so called "file system" is a classical example of parasite which can only hurt Google. And for what? So its "developers" could have their project posted on Slashdot frontpage? So they could say "look, mom, how bloody 'leet' I am"? But no, Google didn't sue them, even though I strongly advised them to. They are nice even to people who violate them.
But the problem persists. What if one day someone writes a "file system" stealing storage from Slashdot, saving its files in the form of gigabyte first posts filled with goats.ex links and literally tons of uuencoded pornography? This is exactly the same, only much worse, because unlike Slashdot Google has much less intrusive advertisements and no bias and corporate agenda. From every greedy US corporation, Google is unquestionably the closest to being absolutely perfect. And how do we say "thank you"? By stealing their property? By advertising this pathetic thief "file system" on the front page of the most popular website on the north hemisphere?
I just want to remind you that I was strongly against it from the very beginning, explicitly voicing my concerns when it was a "hot" topic, only to get completely ignored by the entire community. But we cannot tolerate such a behaviour, I'm sorry. Google is not another IBM who didn't see anything wrong in helping build concentration camps or Cisco who is perfectly comfortable with building the largest machines of censorship and oppression in the history of human kind.
Google, unlike any other company, is trying to do what is best for us. They deserve our gratefulness and respect. The existence of script kiddies shamefully exploiting Google's services for their own miserable advantage is a precedence not only insulting to our intelligence but a one actually harmful for us in the long run, because that could possibly mean the end of fantastic projects from Google, when they eventually stop to think and inevitably say: "Hey, what's the point of doing no evil? What's the point of being nice guys if people just want to steal from us? Maybe that pop-up pornography ads and paid search results placement weren't such a bad idea after all?" I know I certainly would.
Sorry for a long rant. I just love Google and I hate people who hurt it. I think it is great that Google is still ahead. The question is: how long will they survive in the world of greedy scums like M$N, AO£ and ¥ahoo? Is there a place for nice guys in the world ruled by greedy bastards? I certainly hope so.
Apple has some nice LCD monitors with the features you describe: they are 17- and 20-inch, they have wifi antennas, sound input and output, USB, FireWire and Ethernet ports, DVD burners... OK, let's just face it: PCs suck.
Or it can not even exist... Seriously, I think I'm going to buy one of those babies.
"MIT Media Lab founder Nicholas Negroponte has a plan to build a $100 PC [...] which is supposedly going to have a 14-inch color screen and run on Linux"
It turns out that Steve Ballmer was right. A $100 PC will indeed reduce Windows piracy, by running Linux. I'm sure Ballmer is very happy about this new project fulfilling his prophecy. This is a very good news for the developing developing developing world.
I've heard that only one could fit.
I would buy it if I only hadn't spent $28,000 on a grilled cheese sandwich bearing an image of the Virgin Mary... Would you give me a kilogram of your wood for one Jesus Tortilla or two Mother Teresa Buns?
From the article: "Additional thoughts: Due to size restrictions, fitting a CD-ROM drive in the mini enclosure would be impossible with this motherboard. Luckily, this motherboard supports pretty much every external bootable device, including bootable CD-ROM and USB thumb drives."
You should not only fit a CD-ROM, but actually a DVD-RW combo. In other words, you have failed to fit a PC in Mac Mini, so comparing its speed or price is quite pointless. I hate to say it as a PC user, but the result of this experiment is clear: Mac: 1, PC: 0.
Here.
There is one. See the link above.
It is going to work, if you have Windows, Linux, BSD or a Mac.
Use Ghostscript then. The GSview graphical interface is available for Windows, OS/2 and Linux (though I personally prefer gv there). It supports PDF and Postscript formats (PS, EPS, etc.), and can display, print and easily convert between them, and even convert them to raster formats, so it is actually much more useful than Acrobat Reader, while being much less bloated at the same time. Ghostscript and GSview are always present on my CDs with useful Windows software, along with OpenOffice.org (which can save as PDF, nota bene), AbiWord, Firefox, ClamWin and PuTTY, to name just a few. If you work with serious printing, Ghostscript is a must.
Thanks. Now I feel like some kind of a sucker with my three-button 2d-scrollball mouse with eight modification keys on the keyboard to use EMACS. But isn't it true that using an input device that is artificially simple induces artificial complexity in all of the input entered using that device? You cannot just sweep the complexity under the carpet, can you? Sure, using this or this is certainly easier than using this, but is it equally rewarding once you master it? Isn't it just a question of beginners vs. experts emphasis?
Wouldn't it make more sense for Apple to contribute to GNUstep?
Screenshot of Tim-Berner Lee's web browser/editor gizmo
Cool, it looks just like my desktop!
Next paragraph from the article you quote: "It's also important to remember that this paper focuses on vulnerable systems. The Honeynet researchers deployed almost 20 vulnerable systems to monitor hacker tactics, and found that no one was hacking the systems. That's the real story: the hackers aren't bothering with Linux. Two years ago, a vulnerable Linux system would be hacked in less than three days; now it takes three months." [emphasis added] This is irrelevant to your argument. It shows that Linux is less likely to be targetted, not that it is more secure or less vulnerable, but only less popular.
"We all know that OSRM has come out to offer insurance against intellectual property claims for open source software. Recently, we've seen IBM open up 500 patents and SUN up the ante with 1600. But all of these moves are targeted at F/OSS software."
Of course those are targetted at free software, because free software is the main force opposing software patents. Check out who is giving their patents to free software, and then check out who is the main pusher of software patents in EU. What we have to realise is that IBM is not giving us patents just because IBM is nice. IBM wants us to shut up while it is lobbying for software patents in the European Union. Hopefully, we are not fools, and we will see the big picture and understand that it is harmful in the long run. And quite frankly it is harmful for both proprietary and free software developers. It is dangerous for anyone who cannot afford an army of lawyers. IBM will be safe with its proprietary software and with its free software, but your mom and pop's software shop will be always vulnerable. Please people, let's not wet our pants because IBM gave us some miserable patents to keep us quiet. Anyone who remembers WW2 knows that this is hardly a company that does not evil, like Google. Let's wait and see what those patents will give us in the countries that have software patents, and meanwhile lobby against such patents in the countries that don't, as hard as we possibly can. It's also a good idea to sign the Thank you, Poland letter to show our support. There is more info on FSF website. The politicians have to know what we want, and they will do what we want, because they want to get reelected. This is the most important thing to understand in politics. "Hey, look, we've got 50000 letters from around the world from people who are strongly against software patents. We'll have have a lot of support and good publicity if we vote against software patents. Screw IBM." This is how it works, folks. It's time to learn it and it's time to start acting. Don't even waste your time on reading those patents, just lobby against them even if those particular patents are ours (with strings attached, of course), because it doesn't mean that we'll get every IBM's and Sun's patents in the future, and the future is what we need to worry about.
That's nothing! Back in my day, when we wanted miraculous healing properties of water, we used radium ore: "By the patented composition of highly selected and scientifically compounded radium ores of which the Revigator is made, this lost element is perpetually restored to all drinking water placed therein." We drank radioactive water, we ate radioactive drugs and we wore radioactive cotton--we were that cool.
When I read "fake science" I thought that they might be after Randi's million but then when I read the conference agenda I thought that they were much less exciting than most of applicants, especially those two and I was like, wtf? Is this story boring or what? And then I was enlightened. Jon Stewart's media criticism indeed applies, even if it is completely irrelevant here, but they in fact are "hurting [the world]," for their frivolous greedy publicity stunts happenings might indeed have a real influence on people and their respective behaviour. Some people might think "hey, the global worning is not such a big deal after all, why not buy another ugly GM SUV monster instead of a hybrid Honda Civic?" which in turn will make the climate even warmer. The question is, why would anyone want to increase the temperature of the planet? It doesn't seem to make any sense, does it? Could that be only a side effect of billions to be made selling oil? Were the recent decisions on the Middle East only a beginning of a bigger plan? Only time will tell.
Don't worry, mate. We all feel that way for the first time. G'day.
They (and they employers) also probably assume that when their key is lost then all of their work is not lost forever. You are right that Microsoft's encryption is a joke, but this is not a good example. What you have described is not a flaw per se, but a design decision. In fact, that is the only way to restore the encrypted data when the user's key is lost. On the other hand, the RC4 flaw is about reusing the same keystream in stream ciphers, which is an inexcusable amateur mistake and shows a level of incompetence just plainly laughable in the case of the largest software giant on the planet. Let me quote Bruce Schneier on Microsoft RC4 Flaw:
As you can see, Microsoft's crypto is a joke indeed. It is an old, unfunny joke that they keep repeating ad nauseam. But it is about a much more important incompetence than what you have noticed. As some people say: "When it comes to security, it's always Amateur Hour in Redmond." Sadly, this has been true forever. When people invest in Microsoft's security they always say "maybe this time they got it right, I'm sure." This is not without a reason.
If you want to read about more technical details and social implications of the RC4 flaw, I highly recommend starting from Bruce Schneier on Security: Microsoft RC4 Flaw (January 18, 2005). There are a lot of informative links and interesting comments there.
Does it mean that MySQL is now officially "ready for the desktop"? Hopefully, the Linux version will be next.
This is an important moment to ask ourselves: do we have the right to play, or even to be gods themselves? Have we already crossed the line? Where is that line? What are the consequences, both physical and ethical, to our bodies and souls, if we can create life? Does it mean that we can not only create souls, but in fact design completely new kinds of souls, new races of people? This is both fascinating and frightening. Could the price for being gods be ethernal damnation? This seems highly unlikely, but can we positively eliminate that possibility. What could that mean to humanity as we know it? So many questions, so little answers... During the next few decades it should be clear whether we as humanity have made the most disastrous mistake in the history of human kind, or the greatest achievement since the creation of the universe. I only hope we will live long enough to understand it. I am really looking forward to know answers to the most important questions of our existance, power, purpose and meaning. Fascinating breakthrough.