The claim that voters voted for Buchanan out of confusion, meaning to vote for Gore, is all but cast iron proven by the statistics, particularly the massive outlier on the Bush/Buchanan popularity graph. Even Buchanan thinks it's true. It's more than just an eyewitness account. --
Not much to be said for stories a friend told you. Substantiated stories only please - let's have a link to a website with images from that camera footage at least. --
Now you seem to be arguing that Presidents should not have the power to commute sentences at all. That's an independent variable from the power of convicted felons to vote.
It would be Right to give felons the vote, but you're right that it wouldn't be popular. It's unfortunate that the people's grasp on what democracy is all about - democracy for all, not just for the popular or well-liked - is so poor. --
... that segments of the electorate might like. I don't see anything especially different about commutions than, say, directed tax breaks. Or changes in the law to legalise something I want to do.
The original poster was quite right that it makes a bit of a joke of democracy to cut the disenfranchised out of the vote. --
All he said was that he "took the initiative in Congress in creating the Internet" - ie he persuaded Congress to fund it. Which he did. Vint Cerf, who (if anyone did) really did invent the Internet, has backed Gore up on what he actually claimed.
I can't stand the man, and wouldn't vote even if I was a USan, but the dull repetition of an old lie still annoys me. --
The entire GNU project that ultimately gave us the operating system we now use is a result of people being prepared to have the philosophical arguments you now abhor. If you don't like to hear people discussing these ideas, don't read Slashdot! --
Depends what you mean by "more secure", doesn't it? Rijndael's security goal is to be "K-secure and hermetic". In layman's terms, this basically means to be as secure as any block cipher with that block and key size can possibly be. If it meets these goals, then Serpent can't possibly be better - it can only be exactly as good.
If I could work out a way of demonstrating that it didn't meet these goals, I'd be the world's most famous cryptanalysist in moments. But I'd still be a million miles away from a break that was actually any good for any real attack that any real adversary, even 3-letter agencies equipped with alien tech, could ever use against you.
There are some good attacks on very much weakened variants of Rijndael. Some people in the crypto world believe that full Rijndael will eventually be demonstrated not to be K-secure. However, no-one who knows what they're talking about thinks that any practical, useful break will ever be found. Really, Rijndael is more than good enough - the weaknesses in your system lie elsewhere. --
It was Dr. Edward Felten who demonstrated for the courts that IE could in fact be removed from Windows 98, and that clear benefits to the consumer resulted from doing so. It was his evidence that Microsoft attempted to discredit with a video that later turned out to be faked.
The stupid Slashdot line breaking algorithm means that you may have to deal with spaces it introduces. Since it seems you can hide spaces in tags, it should be fairly straightforward for trolls to introduce overlong lines this way - I hope Taco fixes it... --
The story that Al Gore claimed to have invented the Internet has been extensively and convincingly debunked. That you repeat it here pretty much destroys the credibility of your other claims - many of which are also debunked on the Red Rock Eater story already posted to Slashdot.
FWIW I think they're both scum and wouldn't vote for either even if I lived in the US, but there's no point repeating nonsense. --
I can see why this argument might seem compelling - the word "design" is certainly appropriate for the extraordinary feats of engineering that are us and other living things. But the even more extraordinary conclusion that this is all a result of genome success based on selection pressure really is how it came to be. To see this argument presented in all its compelling force, you might enjoy Richard Dawkins's "The Blind Watchmaker", which explains the modern theory of evolution in a clear and enjoyable way and also answers some specific claims made by creationists. Check it out. --
/. never promised to be an objective witness to anything./. is unashamedly partisan on lots of issues. To a very great extent,/. is still CmdrTaco and Hemos's personal website, no matter how popular or well funded it is. If the links that they find most interesting about the presidential elections tend to be unsympathetic to Bush, then that's the way they feel and that's what they post. Don't confuse/. with a real news source - it's still a very personal creation. --
I can't remember the details now, but an attack on SHA-0 was found that does not work on SHA-1. Perhaps this means that the open crypto field is not as far behind the NSA as people think?
As a cryptographer I *am* inclined to trust these hash functions. Designing a back door would essentially require inventing a whole new - and much faster - way of doing public key crypto, and then hiding it from the world. And a back door into a hash function isn't as much use as one into, say, a block cipher - though we now know that all the secret tweaks NSA did on DES were aimed at increasing its strength. SHA-1 has stood the test of time where other hash functions (MD5 for example) look shaky. I strongly suspect that these are good for the purposes advertised. --
FWIW, it was Fred Brooks in the Mythical Man Month who said "plan to throw one away - you will anyway".
I think you can build a relatively abuse-resistant system. First, ensure that some *human* effort is needed to submit an article to the website. This means you have to perform some sort of simple on-line Turing test - one example I've seen is "click on the word 'foobar' in this image", but others are possible.
Second, give voting power only to those who've already gained karma/mojo. Giving any power to an account that has not already gained reputation allows you to acquire power by acquiring accounts.
I have no plans to indulge in this "growing up" nonsense. As far as I'm concerned, maturity means doing all the sex and drugs and rock'n'roll you used to do, but having a good meal first (thanks, Warren Ellis). Why to you want, plan, or expect to "grow up"? I know people who've avoided it all their lives, and are pushing sixty.
I'm serious here. And yes, I'm also just below thirty. --
I had a poke at their website, and downloaded their "architectural specification", but it seems that they've made no decisions on what actual algorithms to use. Given that this is so, can anyone work out what the hell they're challenging us to do anyway? The lack of links from the "hacksdmi" website to detailed specs and source code is worse than suspicious: if they expect me to do their securitly analysis for so little they had best at least make it easy for me. --
I seem to remember it was the above. I don't know what his previous login was or why FascDot killed it. But FascDot also chopped off "Ungrounded Lightening Rod"'s rod... suffice to say that Slashdon'ts mistakes are educational for anyone else wanting to do reputation management... --
Encryption can be computationally *very* cheap. And encrypting only your sensitive traffic will rather draw attention to it.
Multicasted video may want to go out unencrypted; not for speed reasons, but because collecting the key might incur unnecessary expense for all parties. But the same argument should not apply to normal, point-to-point communications. --
You're quite right to say that such claims are hogwash when applied to copyright or patent disputes, but AFAIK it's true of trademarks that if you don't defend them, you may lose future cases on the grounds that what was once your trademark has become a common word.
Apart from that niggle I pretty much agree with your analysis. --
With ext2fs (and nearly all other Unix filesystems I know about) even the smallest file consumes at least 512 bytes of storage, so using them to implement a registry is horrendously inefficient.
This is why ReiserFS is such a nice idea: it scales down to the smallest files smoothly, so lots of small files can be stored efficiently. I think if something like that gains widespread use, we may see big trees of small files for configuration and other tasks become much more common. --
Slashdot Mirror
The claim that voters voted for Buchanan out of confusion, meaning to vote for Gore, is all but cast iron proven by the statistics, particularly the massive outlier on the Bush/Buchanan popularity graph. Even Buchanan thinks it's true. It's more than just an eyewitness account.
--
Not much to be said for stories a friend told you. Substantiated stories only please - let's have a link to a website with images from that camera footage at least.
--
Yes, someone needs a bass player.
--
It would be very strange to argue that felons should be allowed to own guns but not to vote!
There again, it's no stranger than allowing people to join the military before allowing them to drink...
--
Now you seem to be arguing that Presidents should not have the power to commute sentences at all. That's an independent variable from the power of convicted felons to vote.
It would be Right to give felons the vote, but you're right that it wouldn't be popular. It's unfortunate that the people's grasp on what democracy is all about - democracy for all, not just for the popular or well-liked - is so poor.
--
... that segments of the electorate might like. I don't see anything especially different about commutions than, say, directed tax breaks. Or changes in the law to legalise something I want to do.
The original poster was quite right that it makes a bit of a joke of democracy to cut the disenfranchised out of the vote.
--
All he said was that he "took the initiative in Congress in creating the Internet" - ie he persuaded Congress to fund it. Which he did. Vint Cerf, who (if anyone did) really did invent the Internet, has backed Gore up on what he actually claimed.
I can't stand the man, and wouldn't vote even if I was a USan, but the dull repetition of an old lie still annoys me.
--
The entire GNU project that ultimately gave us the operating system we now use is a result of people being prepared to have the philosophical arguments you now abhor. If you don't like to hear people discussing these ideas, don't read Slashdot!
--
This is what the Bible tells us about the morality of taking another human life: if it's wrong (murder) then it's wrong (thou shalt not).
I don't know where we'd be without its moral guidance!
--
Depends what you mean by "more secure", doesn't it? Rijndael's security goal is to be "K-secure and hermetic". In layman's terms, this basically means to be as secure as any block cipher with that block and key size can possibly be. If it meets these goals, then Serpent can't possibly be better - it can only be exactly as good.
If I could work out a way of demonstrating that it didn't meet these goals, I'd be the world's most famous cryptanalysist in moments. But I'd still be a million miles away from a break that was actually any good for any real attack that any real adversary, even 3-letter agencies equipped with alien tech, could ever use against you.
There are some good attacks on very much weakened variants of Rijndael. Some people in the crypto world believe that full Rijndael will eventually be demonstrated not to be K-secure. However, no-one who knows what they're talking about thinks that any practical, useful break will ever be found. Really, Rijndael is more than good enough - the weaknesses in your system lie elsewhere.
--
56-bit DES is easily crackable now. Rijndael takes up to a 256-bit key. (256 - 56) = 300. Where are you getting your numbers from?
This calculation is of course pretty meaningless, but it gives you a rough idea.
--
It was Dr. Edward Felten who demonstrated for the courts that IE could in fact be removed from Windows 98, and that clear benefits to the consumer resulted from doing so. It was his evidence that Microsoft attempted to discredit with a video that later turned out to be faked.
t rial/breaking/docs/mstrial121198.htm , http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,2196 350,00.html.
See http://www0.mercurycenter.com/business/microsoft/
The stupid Slashdot line breaking algorithm means that you may have to deal with spaces it introduces. Since it seems you can hide spaces in tags, it should be fairly straightforward for trolls to introduce overlong lines this way - I hope Taco fixes it...
--
The story that Al Gore claimed to have invented the Internet has been extensively and convincingly debunked. That you repeat it here pretty much destroys the credibility of your other claims - many of which are also debunked on the Red Rock Eater story already posted to Slashdot. FWIW I think they're both scum and wouldn't vote for either even if I lived in the US, but there's no point repeating nonsense.
--
I can see why this argument might seem compelling - the word "design" is certainly appropriate for the extraordinary feats of engineering that are us and other living things. But the even more extraordinary conclusion that this is all a result of genome success based on selection pressure really is how it came to be. To see this argument presented in all its compelling force, you might enjoy Richard Dawkins's "The Blind Watchmaker", which explains the modern theory of evolution in a clear and enjoyable way and also answers some specific claims made by creationists. Check it out.
--
/. never promised to be an objective witness to anything. /. is unashamedly partisan on lots of issues. To a very great extent, /. is still CmdrTaco and Hemos's personal website, no matter how popular or well funded it is. If the links that they find most interesting about the presidential elections tend to be unsympathetic to Bush, then that's the way they feel and that's what they post. Don't confuse /. with a real news source - it's still a very personal creation.
--
I can't remember the details now, but an attack on SHA-0 was found that does not work on SHA-1. Perhaps this means that the open crypto field is not as far behind the NSA as people think?
As a cryptographer I *am* inclined to trust these hash functions. Designing a back door would essentially require inventing a whole new - and much faster - way of doing public key crypto, and then hiding it from the world. And a back door into a hash function isn't as much use as one into, say, a block cipher - though we now know that all the secret tweaks NSA did on DES were aimed at increasing its strength. SHA-1 has stood the test of time where other hash functions (MD5 for example) look shaky. I strongly suspect that these are good for the purposes advertised.
--
FWIW, it was Fred Brooks in the Mythical Man Month who said "plan to throw one away - you will anyway".
I think you can build a relatively abuse-resistant system. First, ensure that some *human* effort is needed to submit an article to the website. This means you have to perform some sort of simple on-line Turing test - one example I've seen is "click on the word 'foobar' in this image", but others are possible.
Second, give voting power only to those who've already gained karma/mojo. Giving any power to an account that has not already gained reputation allows you to acquire power by acquiring accounts.
Thoughts?
--
"That's not the real key, that's the duress key! Give me the real key!" *thwack*
"But Boris, that *was* the real, final key! I swear there aren't any other keys for that drive, I swear!"
You can't have it both ways...
--
Are the Mozilla project investing too much effort into the irrelevant stuff, or too little?
--
I have no plans to indulge in this "growing up" nonsense. As far as I'm concerned, maturity means doing all the sex and drugs and rock'n'roll you used to do, but having a good meal first (thanks, Warren Ellis). Why to you want, plan, or expect to "grow up"? I know people who've avoided it all their lives, and are pushing sixty.
I'm serious here. And yes, I'm also just below thirty.
--
I had a poke at their website, and downloaded their "architectural specification", but it seems that they've made no decisions on what actual algorithms to use. Given that this is so, can anyone work out what the hell they're challenging us to do anyway? The lack of links from the "hacksdmi" website to detailed specs and source code is worse than suspicious: if they expect me to do their securitly analysis for so little they had best at least make it easy for me.
--
I seem to remember it was the above. I don't know what his previous login was or why FascDot killed it. But FascDot also chopped off "Ungrounded Lightening Rod"'s rod... suffice to say that Slashdon'ts mistakes are educational for anyone else wanting to do reputation management...
--
Encryption can be computationally *very* cheap. And encrypting only your sensitive traffic will rather draw attention to it.
Multicasted video may want to go out unencrypted; not for speed reasons, but because collecting the key might incur unnecessary expense for all parties. But the same argument should not apply to normal, point-to-point communications.
--
You're quite right to say that such claims are hogwash when applied to copyright or patent disputes, but AFAIK it's true of trademarks that if you don't defend them, you may lose future cases on the grounds that what was once your trademark has become a common word.
Apart from that niggle I pretty much agree with your analysis.
--
With ext2fs (and nearly all other Unix filesystems I know about) even the smallest file consumes at least 512 bytes of storage, so using them to implement a registry is horrendously inefficient.
This is why ReiserFS is such a nice idea: it scales down to the smallest files smoothly, so lots of small files can be stored efficiently. I think if something like that gains widespread use, we may see big trees of small files for configuration and other tasks become much more common.
--