That may or may not be true, but groups of like-minded people can examine different sections and thus cover the entire codebase. It may not be easy to do, but the important point is that you have the option to do so. Closed source gives you no such option even for simple software that you could conceivably understand completely.
Nope, I don't have appropriate qualifications in most of those areas. I was being ironic in my reply to someone stating that posters should have relevant qualifications to post legal opinions.
I totally agree with your statements about legal advice and I was hoping that my post would highlight the stupidity of following legal advice from strangers.
It's not off-topic, but I think that people shouldn't be afraid to post opinions in forums like Slashdot. By all means challenge wrong information, but it sounds too much like an argument from authority to declare that only opinions backed by qualifications should be allowed.
You're right, but with Red Hat, they hardly even need to make the statement as their software is transparently open and lots of people have agreed on how it should work. Also, with most FOSS software, you have the option of hosting it yourself and being in control of the keys.
Although not everyone has time to inspect all the software they use, it's important that people have that option available. I'd rather trust independant security researchers and open source code reviewers than just trusting Microsoft with no other option available.
If I had any reason to distrust some software, then I could always pay someone to perform an audit/code review and see what's going on (e.g. TrueCrypt has been inspected since the NSA relevations to see if the binaries are different to the published source code and they check out).
You seem to be confusing good security design and security through obscurity. A good encryption algorithm is still a good encryption algorithm when it's generally known how it works as it would rely on a separate "secret" or "key". Like a house door - I can know how it works, but without the key it's not going to be easy to open.
Bad security uses "security through obscurity". Those types of systems become useless once you know how they work. Examples of this would include puzzle locks, ROT13 encryption etc.
That would be more like a maze than a jail. If you spent time to train as a software dev and spent some time reading through the Firefox codebase, you would then be able inspect the source code and have an understanding of it.
There's a world of difference between a locked door and an open doorway.
I am a lawyer, and I am your lawyer and this is legal advice.
I advise you to not post your "legal advice recommendations" in an online forum meant for people to hold discussions about relevant topics. Please don't post to Slashdot without appropriate qualifications (an MSC should suffice).
If the envelope is "intercepted", then the interception point is the destination and the experiment is a different experiment than if it hadn't been "intercepted". In fact, you'd be performing two experiments - from the origin to the interception and from the interception to the final destination/observer.
I have no way of telling whether or not I'm a physicist unless I observe myself.
Hmmm - that doesn't really clarify, but instead just makes quantum physics seem confusing.
Here's a link to a nice series on explaining quantum physics that doesn't try to make it seem "magical", but instead is just the basis for how stuff works in the real world: http://lesswrong.com/lw/pc/quantum_explanations/
You do realise that the tachyon anti-telephone doesn't actually exist due to tachyons not existing (as far as we know).
I appreciate that you're celebrating the wild ideas that laymen can have, but analogies are bad if they mis-represent what is happening as they're supposed to make things clearer, not murkier.
Interesting, but can you use that idea to make predictions? It'd be cool if you could derive certain constants from how computable a simulation would be.
Or, you flip a coin. While the coin is spinning, you manage (somehow) to put the two halves of the coin into different envelopes and send them in different directions. When you open one enevelope and stop the coin from spinning, mysteriously, you can figure out that the other side of the coin is now the opposite value i.e. if you see heads in the envelope you open, then you know that the other envelope is tails.
I'm either 100% a physicist or 100% not a physicist, but I don't see the difference between "destination" or "observation". If you haven't observed it, then why do you think it's "in transit"? If you aren't observing it, then it literally could be anywhere. It's meaningless to talk about the state of something that you're not measuring; it's like talking about the colour of an invisible pink unicorn.
I agree and as I am English (and thus speak only one language) I should be able to judge their aptitude. In fact, the Dutch seem to be amazingly good with languages and often their English is better than native speakers.
Slashdot Mirror
Fair enough. I was just making the point that Slashdot is never formal advice and should never be thought of as such.
That may or may not be true, but groups of like-minded people can examine different sections and thus cover the entire codebase. It may not be easy to do, but the important point is that you have the option to do so. Closed source gives you no such option even for simple software that you could conceivably understand completely.
But, is it still pink when it's invisible? Is "pinkness" an intrinsic quality or can only something being observed be pink?
Nope, I don't have appropriate qualifications in most of those areas. I was being ironic in my reply to someone stating that posters should have relevant qualifications to post legal opinions.
I totally agree with your statements about legal advice and I was hoping that my post would highlight the stupidity of following legal advice from strangers.
It's not off-topic, but I think that people shouldn't be afraid to post opinions in forums like Slashdot. By all means challenge wrong information, but it sounds too much like an argument from authority to declare that only opinions backed by qualifications should be allowed.
You're right, but with Red Hat, they hardly even need to make the statement as their software is transparently open and lots of people have agreed on how it should work. Also, with most FOSS software, you have the option of hosting it yourself and being in control of the keys.
Although not everyone has time to inspect all the software they use, it's important that people have that option available. I'd rather trust independant security researchers and open source code reviewers than just trusting Microsoft with no other option available.
If I had any reason to distrust some software, then I could always pay someone to perform an audit/code review and see what's going on (e.g. TrueCrypt has been inspected since the NSA relevations to see if the binaries are different to the published source code and they check out).
You seem to be confusing good security design and security through obscurity. A good encryption algorithm is still a good encryption algorithm when it's generally known how it works as it would rely on a separate "secret" or "key". Like a house door - I can know how it works, but without the key it's not going to be easy to open.
Bad security uses "security through obscurity". Those types of systems become useless once you know how they work. Examples of this would include puzzle locks, ROT13 encryption etc.
That would be more like a maze than a jail. If you spent time to train as a software dev and spent some time reading through the Firefox codebase, you would then be able inspect the source code and have an understanding of it.
There's a world of difference between a locked door and an open doorway.
And I feel very smart for criticising the critical reasoning of an Anonymous Coward who doesn't understand a joke when he/she sees one.
I am a lawyer, and I am your lawyer and this is legal advice.
I advise you to not post your "legal advice recommendations" in an online forum meant for people to hold discussions about relevant topics. Please don't post to Slashdot without appropriate qualifications (an MSC should suffice).
If the envelope is "intercepted", then the interception point is the destination and the experiment is a different experiment than if it hadn't been "intercepted". In fact, you'd be performing two experiments - from the origin to the interception and from the interception to the final destination/observer.
I have no way of telling whether or not I'm a physicist unless I observe myself.
Hmmm - that doesn't really clarify, but instead just makes quantum physics seem confusing.
Here's a link to a nice series on explaining quantum physics that doesn't try to make it seem "magical", but instead is just the basis for how stuff works in the real world: http://lesswrong.com/lw/pc/quantum_explanations/
You do realise that the tachyon anti-telephone doesn't actually exist due to tachyons not existing (as far as we know).
I appreciate that you're celebrating the wild ideas that laymen can have, but analogies are bad if they mis-represent what is happening as they're supposed to make things clearer, not murkier.
That's a great link, funny and insightful at the same time.
Interesting, but can you use that idea to make predictions? It'd be cool if you could derive certain constants from how computable a simulation would be.
Is it 57 times?
Or, you flip a coin. While the coin is spinning, you manage (somehow) to put the two halves of the coin into different envelopes and send them in different directions. When you open one enevelope and stop the coin from spinning, mysteriously, you can figure out that the other side of the coin is now the opposite value i.e. if you see heads in the envelope you open, then you know that the other envelope is tails.
I'm either 100% a physicist or 100% not a physicist, but I don't see the difference between "destination" or "observation". If you haven't observed it, then why do you think it's "in transit"? If you aren't observing it, then it literally could be anywhere. It's meaningless to talk about the state of something that you're not measuring; it's like talking about the colour of an invisible pink unicorn.
I agree and as I am English (and thus speak only one language) I should be able to judge their aptitude. In fact, the Dutch seem to be amazingly good with languages and often their English is better than native speakers.
Here in the UK, corn always mean maize and never wheat or barley.
I live in the UK and maize is mainly a US term. We use "corn" to mean maize. Wheat and barley are called "wheat" and "barley" and never "corn".
Aluminium vs aluminum?
Common sense is more like a super-power from what I've seen.
That sounds like the behaviour of governments around the world, only on a larger more murderous scale.