I call BS on the notion that my CPU is smarter than me. Article claims that it takes "hundreds of years" to break this. Obviously then it must take the program "hundreds of years" to run. Otherwise the CPU is using a short-cut. All I have to do is figure out what the short cut is (hint: figure out what the CPU is doing, where it got its instructions from) and it's cracked. If your computer can run it, you can figure it out. It's that simple.
By this argument, PGP, RSA et al must be worthless too, because if it takes hundreds of years to break a 256-bit cypher it must take hundreds of years to run a 256-bit cypher. You know, if your computer can run it, you can figure it out.
So long as we're able to see the instructions being given to the processor (hint: we pretty much always can), you can reverse engineer the code.
True. As long as you are able to follow every possible path of execution of the code. Which puts us in the realms of "theoretically possible, but unfeasible in practice".
How do we normally reverse engineer code? We run the code through a debugger/logger to identify contiguous areas of code and data, and to highlight common destination points for branch conditions and data addresses frequently read from/written to. That information is used to inform the automated stages of disassembly. Probablistic models see something that looks like a branch to a common destination, and assume that it is one. They see what looks like a write to a common destination and assume it is one. Encrypt your addresses and hash them to appear different and the hints are removed from the object code, and only identifiable during execution or simulated execution, which brings us back to unfeasible-in-practice exhaustive execution.
Not exactly. Reverse engineering starts with the analysis of a running program with the goal of obtaining enough data about the locations of executable code vs data, major variable locations/identifiers etc to allow you to start running automated disassembly of the total code. All you can get out of a run-time analysis is a specific execution path, which does not embody the full code.
Now yes, "if your CPU can read it, then you can read it", but unfortunately in this situation, your CPU can only read it in certain circumstances, so you'll only be able to read it in those same circumtances: execution or simulated execution, leading back to the situation where you're stuck looking at traces of specific executions...
Of course not. US immigration policy is messed up, with politicians "protecting skilled jobs" that not enough people have the skills to do (H1B etc), while exploiting the desperation of foreigners to drive down prices for unskilled work that anyone could do.
The problem I have with ever-expanding government food programs is that it drives the prices up for those of us living independently.
Are you sure that this isn't just something called "inflation"...?
Cos I remember when you could get a loaf of bread for 35p, and now it's almost a pound. I remember when the condom machines in toilets were selling 3 for a pound, but now they're 2 for 3 pounds. Changes in the global economy over the last decade has seen costs of living rise quicker than wages (ie effective pay cuts for the majority of workers year after year) in most developed countries.
The pattern you blame on increasing welfare has been seen also in Europe while we have been cutting back on welfare in "austerity" measures.
Just leave your passport at home and you will be welcomed with open arms. Just make sure you get here by illegally crossing the southern border.
Hell, in a few weeks you will even be granted citizenship.
Oh, you viscious b******s. I know illegal immigration is a serious offence, but that sentence is just disproportionate to the crime. What next, the death penalty for children who shoplift sweets?!?
If they have no other reason to search your computer, then there is probably a 99% chance that no one will even ask you to turn on your laptop.
Off-topic, but I've only once been asked to boot up my computer, on a flight out of Italy. Later, on the plane, the passenger next to me tried to boot up her PC, and it kept crashing. She had forced a shutdown mid-boot after the security check and corrupted her boot sector. The ironic bit was that she was a consultant with a certain Big Blue IT company.
This was around the time when they started getting concerned about the threat of false laptops with explosives instead of batteries, so I'm guessing this was a common policy for about three weeks, before the complaints from major corporations about the lost productivity of their mobile workforce started rolling in....
Are you really trying to claim that blame can only be assigned to one party?
Let's ignore politics, and talk genuine conmen and snake-oil merchants. Do the little old ladies tricked into selling antiques at knock-down prices get what they "deserve"?
You don't have to absolve someone of all blame to say "they didn't deserve that".
Seriously, China? WTF. Going back to medieval values here? Executing people for pollution?
They should be punished, but death is a bit much.
Yeah, the death penalty should be reserved for angry guys who stab one person with a knife. The civilised punishment for poisoning the water drunk by thousands of people is a slap on the wrist and a fine that looks large to newpaper readers but causes no material harm to the perpetrator....
Speaking from experience, I disagree entirely. The formal education environment was definitely not for me.
Your experience is of bad teaching. Self-study is the only alternative when you have a bad teacher, but it's being defeatist to believe that we cannot ever achieve good standards of teaching.
True. The problem is that we stigmatised our (world class) Further Education system in the 80s and encouraged the polytechnics to become universities. Rather than giving prestige to a technical education, we belittled it and said that the only qualification worth having is the degree. Now they're constantly telling us the degrees are too abstract and need to be more vocationally focused.
We need to look at France. In France, there are various types of tertiary education, each respected as being appropriate for its subject. I was working in an IUT, something equivalent to a polytechnic, but it is not the soft option UK colleges were always considered to be. There are competitive exams and selection to enter. The best and brightest go there. If students are struggling in the first semester, they are regularly advised to go to uni instead, and try to salvage their year by doing something easier.
Then there's the engineering schools, different again from the university system, and again very prestigious.
So no, we don't want programming pigeon-holed as low skill work, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't be rebuilding the vocational education network -- it just means that we should be giving it the prestige that it always deserved.
The kids I see can't type. Some of them can't use a mouse. Most of them use CAPSLOCK when they mean Shift.
So your argument is what, "kids don't know how to use computers, so we shouldn't be teaching them how to use computers"?
Why should they be in a programming class when they can't form a complete sentence?
I can only assume you work in a school for children with diagnosed mental disorders. Either that or you should be calling social services, because they're clearly suffering neglect.
If, on the other hand, your complaint is that they can't form a correct complete sentence, then that probably means you're using the wrong rules. It is all well and good that you want them to speak "standard" English, but that doesn't mean that their local dialect is wrong.
And finally, how does omitting computing from the curriculum improve their literacy? Is radiation from the computer zapping their brains or something? I don't get it....
Putting programming in public schools is just an attempt at creating more competent programmers in an effort to further pull salaries down. It might even work, but not nearly as well as is hoped.
The way computer teaching will drive up productivity is by supplying us with an educated workforce that can do basic scripting to automate their regular or ad hoc tasks. Honestly, I used to work for a major IT consultancy, and I was appalled by how many of many colleagues were doing repetitive stuff by hand, rather than programming keyboard macros, writing shell scripts etc. In an IT consultancy! And don't get me started on all the spreadsheets.
We need to start teaching people to see computing — proper computing — as a tool, not a speciality. Then we'll be more productive, and (perhaps more importantly) less bored at work.
If I'd stuck to the curriculum shoved down my throat in school, I wouldn't have gotten into computers. [...] And programming, more than many other topics, requires self-directed learning.
This is a non-sequitur, a huge leap of logic. The curriculum you were given at school was bad. That demonstrates nothing more than that bad teaching doesn't work. This is not surprising.
The problem in computer teaching is a problem of poorly designed curriculums, and teachers who often don't understand the technology they're working with. Worse, the curriculum is rarely provided to the teachers with full explanation of the curriculum design, so the teachers aren't aware of what they're doing or why. This leads the teacher to be simply a computer delivering a sequence of instructions, rather than a true teacher, building meaningful explanations and scaffolding students through their difficulties.
The problem is that any wide initiative to improve computing teaching is likely to be a design-by-committee, standardised curriculum that recreates the same problem for teachers, and doesn't improve the situation....
Teaching random kids how to program will not result in good programmers. Focus on outreach, self-study is the only way to go.
Self-study is not the way to go. Self-study works for the lucky few who stumble on the right strategy, materials etc, but it's a lottery. Directed study works for the majority... if the teacher is good enough.
That's bullshit. Perhaps you're choosing to ignore the hundreds of white terrorists that were murdering women and children while out shopping with their cowardly bombs. Or how these white terrorists were forcing taxi drivers to deliver bombs to set locations or face having their family wiped out. Yes, believe it or not, the IRA were all white, and were branded terrorists too.
Reread what I wrote:
However, it has already lost its meaning because white folk are no longer being classed as terrorists.
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I call BS on the notion that my CPU is smarter than me. Article claims that it takes "hundreds of years" to break this. Obviously then it must take the program "hundreds of years" to run. Otherwise the CPU is using a short-cut. All I have to do is figure out what the short cut is (hint: figure out what the CPU is doing, where it got its instructions from) and it's cracked. If your computer can run it, you can figure it out. It's that simple.
By this argument, PGP, RSA et al must be worthless too, because if it takes hundreds of years to break a 256-bit cypher it must take hundreds of years to run a 256-bit cypher. You know, if your computer can run it, you can figure it out.
I hope you can see the flaw in your argument now.
So long as we're able to see the instructions being given to the processor (hint: we pretty much always can), you can reverse engineer the code.
True. As long as you are able to follow every possible path of execution of the code. Which puts us in the realms of "theoretically possible, but unfeasible in practice".
How do we normally reverse engineer code? We run the code through a debugger/logger to identify contiguous areas of code and data, and to highlight common destination points for branch conditions and data addresses frequently read from/written to. That information is used to inform the automated stages of disassembly. Probablistic models see something that looks like a branch to a common destination, and assume that it is one. They see what looks like a write to a common destination and assume it is one. Encrypt your addresses and hash them to appear different and the hints are removed from the object code, and only identifiable during execution or simulated execution, which brings us back to unfeasible-in-practice exhaustive execution.
Not exactly. Reverse engineering starts with the analysis of a running program with the goal of obtaining enough data about the locations of executable code vs data, major variable locations/identifiers etc to allow you to start running automated disassembly of the total code. All you can get out of a run-time analysis is a specific execution path, which does not embody the full code.
Now yes, "if your CPU can read it, then you can read it", but unfortunately in this situation, your CPU can only read it in certain circumstances, so you'll only be able to read it in those same circumtances: execution or simulated execution, leading back to the situation where you're stuck looking at traces of specific executions...
on the desktop? It'll be the year of COBOL for Mobile! Run your infrastructure directly on the phones your employee's bring to the office.
Many a true word spoken in jest...
Are you going to defend that as good policy?
Of course not. US immigration policy is messed up, with politicians "protecting skilled jobs" that not enough people have the skills to do (H1B etc), while exploiting the desperation of foreigners to drive down prices for unskilled work that anyone could do.
The problem I have with ever-expanding government food programs is that it drives the prices up for those of us living independently.
Are you sure that this isn't just something called "inflation"...?
Cos I remember when you could get a loaf of bread for 35p, and now it's almost a pound. I remember when the condom machines in toilets were selling 3 for a pound, but now they're 2 for 3 pounds. Changes in the global economy over the last decade has seen costs of living rise quicker than wages (ie effective pay cuts for the majority of workers year after year) in most developed countries.
The pattern you blame on increasing welfare has been seen also in Europe while we have been cutting back on welfare in "austerity" measures.
Correlation is not causation.
Actually, you could probably get Lua to run COBOL programs....
Are you referring to free access to welfare,
Welfare? You have that there now?
Probably more reliable than most of the explosives-based bomb plots in recent years.... (see also "shoe bomber", "underpants bomber")
Just leave your passport at home and you will be welcomed with open arms. Just make sure you get here by illegally crossing the southern border.
Hell, in a few weeks you will even be granted citizenship.
Oh, you viscious b******s. I know illegal immigration is a serious offence, but that sentence is just disproportionate to the crime. What next, the death penalty for children who shoplift sweets?!?
If they have no other reason to search your computer, then there is probably a 99% chance that no one will even ask you to turn on your laptop.
Off-topic, but I've only once been asked to boot up my computer, on a flight out of Italy. Later, on the plane, the passenger next to me tried to boot up her PC, and it kept crashing. She had forced a shutdown mid-boot after the security check and corrupted her boot sector. The ironic bit was that she was a consultant with a certain Big Blue IT company.
This was around the time when they started getting concerned about the threat of false laptops with explosives instead of batteries, so I'm guessing this was a common policy for about three weeks, before the complaints from major corporations about the lost productivity of their mobile workforce started rolling in....
There is nothing illegal about possessing music and movies in the US, regardless of where you got them.
But is there a law against importing music and movies for personal use? That's what the poster really needs to know.
Are you really trying to claim that blame can only be assigned to one party?
Let's ignore politics, and talk genuine conmen and snake-oil merchants. Do the little old ladies tricked into selling antiques at knock-down prices get what they "deserve"?
You don't have to absolve someone of all blame to say "they didn't deserve that".
So why do voters "get what they deserve"...?
The People get the government that they deserve.
Sorry, are you blaming the victims of the conmen, and not the conmen themselves...?
Surely it's the poor who get real justice, and the rich buy themselves out of it...?
Look, I'm not in favour of the death penalty, but if it's there, why should cold, callous, heartless, multiple murderers be exempted?
...off with your head!
Seriously, China? WTF. Going back to medieval values here? Executing people for pollution?
They should be punished, but death is a bit much.
Yeah, the death penalty should be reserved for angry guys who stab one person with a knife. The civilised punishment for poisoning the water drunk by thousands of people is a slap on the wrist and a fine that looks large to newpaper readers but causes no material harm to the perpetrator....
Self-study is not the way to go.
Speaking from experience, I disagree entirely. The formal education environment was definitely not for me.
Your experience is of bad teaching. Self-study is the only alternative when you have a bad teacher, but it's being defeatist to believe that we cannot ever achieve good standards of teaching.
True. The problem is that we stigmatised our (world class) Further Education system in the 80s and encouraged the polytechnics to become universities. Rather than giving prestige to a technical education, we belittled it and said that the only qualification worth having is the degree. Now they're constantly telling us the degrees are too abstract and need to be more vocationally focused.
We need to look at France. In France, there are various types of tertiary education, each respected as being appropriate for its subject. I was working in an IUT, something equivalent to a polytechnic, but it is not the soft option UK colleges were always considered to be. There are competitive exams and selection to enter. The best and brightest go there. If students are struggling in the first semester, they are regularly advised to go to uni instead, and try to salvage their year by doing something easier.
Then there's the engineering schools, different again from the university system, and again very prestigious.
So no, we don't want programming pigeon-holed as low skill work, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't be rebuilding the vocational education network -- it just means that we should be giving it the prestige that it always deserved.
The kids I see can't type. Some of them can't use a mouse. Most of them use CAPSLOCK when they mean Shift.
So your argument is what, "kids don't know how to use computers, so we shouldn't be teaching them how to use computers"?
Why should they be in a programming class when they can't form a complete sentence?
I can only assume you work in a school for children with diagnosed mental disorders. Either that or you should be calling social services, because they're clearly suffering neglect.
If, on the other hand, your complaint is that they can't form a correct complete sentence, then that probably means you're using the wrong rules. It is all well and good that you want them to speak "standard" English, but that doesn't mean that their local dialect is wrong.
And finally, how does omitting computing from the curriculum improve their literacy? Is radiation from the computer zapping their brains or something? I don't get it....
Putting programming in public schools is just an attempt at creating more competent programmers in an effort to further pull salaries down. It might even work, but not nearly as well as is hoped.
The way computer teaching will drive up productivity is by supplying us with an educated workforce that can do basic scripting to automate their regular or ad hoc tasks. Honestly, I used to work for a major IT consultancy, and I was appalled by how many of many colleagues were doing repetitive stuff by hand, rather than programming keyboard macros, writing shell scripts etc. In an IT consultancy! And don't get me started on all the spreadsheets.
We need to start teaching people to see computing — proper computing — as a tool, not a speciality. Then we'll be more productive, and (perhaps more importantly) less bored at work.
If I'd stuck to the curriculum shoved down my throat in school, I wouldn't have gotten into computers. [...] And programming, more than many other topics, requires self-directed learning.
This is a non-sequitur, a huge leap of logic. The curriculum you were given at school was bad. That demonstrates nothing more than that bad teaching doesn't work. This is not surprising.
The problem in computer teaching is a problem of poorly designed curriculums, and teachers who often don't understand the technology they're working with. Worse, the curriculum is rarely provided to the teachers with full explanation of the curriculum design, so the teachers aren't aware of what they're doing or why. This leads the teacher to be simply a computer delivering a sequence of instructions, rather than a true teacher, building meaningful explanations and scaffolding students through their difficulties.
The problem is that any wide initiative to improve computing teaching is likely to be a design-by-committee, standardised curriculum that recreates the same problem for teachers, and doesn't improve the situation....
Not that there's anything wrong with BASICs... ;-)
Unfortunately, the carbonara sauce doesn't stick to that type of spaghetti as well as it does to the egg-and-flour based stuff.
Teaching random kids how to program will not result in good programmers. Focus on outreach, self-study is the only way to go.
Self-study is not the way to go. Self-study works for the lucky few who stumble on the right strategy, materials etc, but it's a lottery. Directed study works for the majority... if the teacher is good enough.
That's bullshit. Perhaps you're choosing to ignore the hundreds of white terrorists that were murdering women and children while out shopping with their cowardly bombs. Or how these white terrorists were forcing taxi drivers to deliver bombs to set locations or face having their family wiped out. Yes, believe it or not, the IRA were all white, and were branded terrorists too.
Reread what I wrote:
However, it has already lost its meaning because white folk are no longer being classed as terrorists.