A wonderful little program (5.5k) by Tim Clarke called MARS.EXE let you move with your mouse through shaded voxel-based martian terrain under a cloudy sky. It an at fantastic speed even on a 386.
The open source advocates never said that nothing else but open source could work. They said that open source *works*, and works well. I tend to agree.
KDE, Gnome, Linux kernel - with all due respect to Theo and OpenBSD, I think they are larger in scope than fine-tuning and improving the security of an existing operating system. I don't think projects of this magnitude could have been done without massive open-source community involvement.
The so-called Nemesis theory is about 14 years old - a large planet with extremely long period deflects comets from the Oort cloud and is responsible for mass extinctions like the dinosaurs which appear to be happening periodically.
The new thing here is that someone has actually calculated a probable orbit.
As I see it he means that the orbits of the comets he studied, their vectors and timing have only a 1:1700 of having the relationship they have by chance, without a single large body deflecting them (assuming his math is correct, that is)
Bruce Schneier is a very nice guy and has done a lot to popularize cryptography and fight common misconceptions about cryptography. However, I still think that if he had made a breakthrough in cryptography of the same magniture as RSA he would have patented it.
The fact that he made Blowfish free is not an indication - what would he have to gain by patenting it? Another patented symmetric algorithm which nobody but Counterpane would use? This way, he got a lot of publicity and good feelings from the community.
Maybe it's not a community to you. It doesn't reall feel like a community for me but I can certainly see how for some this website could be more than just news for nerds.
After all, this site and everything in it is written by people. Getting a group of people together and communicating should be pretty close to anyone's definition of a community.
I know what you mean... I felt the same when I downloaded cygwin32 and saw the GPL in the license box in InstallShield. It really feels great to see the GPL in a place where you are used to seeing the usual restrictive licenses.
In the April CryptoGram Bruce Schneier writes about the threat of viruses and trojans modifying verification keys:
Microsoft had the foresight to include two root-level Authenticode certificates, presumably for if one ever gets compromised. But the software is designed to authenticate code if even one checks out. So a virus can replace the authenticode spare certificate. Now rogue software signed with this rogue certificate verifies as valid, and real software signed by valid Microsoft-approved companies still checks out as valid.
The wrong assumption is that is is a result of Microsoft foresight - the leaked debug symbols reveals the second key to be an NSA key. The analysis about being able to replace one either voluntarily or maliciously is still correct.
These fonts were created by Monotype and are superbly hinted for display at low resolutions. They are freely available for use (with some restrictions on distribution).
Hint: if you don't have access to a Windows machine for running the self-installing executable download the "Windows 16 bit" versions which are actually self-extracting zips. Info-zip can handle them. Links to the fonts are here
BTW - The x font server which comes with Red Hat 6.0 supports TrueType.
Of the 36 million addresses in their list many are unused, part of modem dialup pools, assigned to router ports, running NT, etc. The percentage of UNIX servers which are vulnerable would be much higher.
I wouldn't want begin to guess the percentage of vulnerable NT machines...
Your immune system destroys a significant percentage of your throat lining cells as it battles a common cold. That's why you have a sore throat. In fact, ALL the symptoms you feel are a result of your immune system, not the invading viruses.
Do you really want an anti-viral software which destroys half your files to just to get rid of the virus?
NASA's claims that these 10% is all it needs to run these huge projects is basically admitting that the remaining 90% of its budget is wasted on feeding bureaucrats.
NASA's current budget, adjusted for inflation is about the same as it was at the peak of the Apollo program.
The european Digital Audio Broadcast (DAB) standard is not spread spectrum.
To gain resistance to fading caused by multipath interference a signal needs to be a few megahertz wide.
In the case of cellular phones the narrow data signal is spread my mixing it with a higher rate spreading sequence.
DAB works differently: it aggregates a large number of compressed audio signals and transmits them using one high-rate carrier.
Another reason why DAB is so efficient is that it is possible to transmit the same signal from several transmitters covering overlapping areas and the signals will not interfere with each other in the overlapping zones. A regular radio station has a small area where the signal is received with good quality and a very large zone where reception is poor but the frequency cannot be reused. DAB can cover an entire continent with continous coverage of the same signal - good, but only for big centralized broadcasters.
I'm afraid that any public access to DAB transmission will be more similar to the cable model.
My email address is hiding somewhere deep within the credits file of an obscure utility included with most distributions. At first I thought that was the reason I got the email. But then I noticed that the destination address is one of the throwaway aliases I use to reduce spam. I traced it back to a bug report I filed at redhat.
I find that insulting...
E*Trade is going to be getting thousands of new customers, each will deposit at least $1000. None of them are assured to actually get shares.
As long as you don't replace ALL employees at the same time, something remains. New people assimilate the values and the spirit of the team and pass it on.
Let's assume that the last engineer who actually worked for Commodore left 5 years ago - I'm still sure that if you step into their development facility and speak with the people for a while you will feel something about the atmosphere which is not Mac, not Linux/Unix and definitely not Microsoft. And it's this kind of thing that makes great software.
Even if you ignore the actual code base, there's definitely something left.
"They are useful in situations where there is a trusted path from the reader to the verifier" (Schneier, Aug 98 Crypto-Gram)
Since the ATM is built as a safe, saying there is a trusted path from reader to verifier would almost be an understatement in this case.
Trying to use biometrics for "securing" remote logins would be pathetic, unless you are using tamper resistant readers that sign their biometric reading + with timestamp or challenge to prevent replay attacks. And be sure keep some way to revoke reader credentials in case a reader signing key is compromised.
Of course the reports eventually give a fuller account, but what people remember (a.k.a. "The Truth" or "Reality") is the made-for-TV solemn announcements.
It's consistent with the official statements about the Apollo 204 pad fire - it sounds much more heroic and clean to hear that Roger Chaffee, Gus Grissom and Ed White were "killed instantly" rather than struggled for a minute to open the hatch before the hull ruptured.
Or Challenger - it's more heroic to think that they went up with a flame than to know the truth - the damaged orbiter, passenger compartment virtually intact flew for a few more minutes in a ballistic trajectory until it crashed into the water. The astronauts died on impact.
This patronizing attitude from governments officials who think they know better about what we should or shouldn't be allowed to know about what is being done with our money is certainly not as strong as it was 30 years ago, but it's still with us.
In a way, I can understand them, tough. They were trying to protect their budgets which depended on public image. And these budgets did send my childhood heroes into orbit and to the moon...
P.S. NASA's budget, adjusted for inflation, is almost at big as it was at the peak of the Apollo program.
Hey, this kind of claims reminds me of cold fusion - you really wish was actually true. The major difference is that this is probably nothing more than words on a web page while in those cold fusion cells something was actually happening, although probably not fusion.
I don't think anyone in the US government actually thinks that only the US has good crypto and that export restrictions really limit the availability of strong crypto outside the US.
They may appear to act dumb at time, but this is a result of politics, not stupidity.
Export restrictions are actually working very well to limit the widespread acceptance of interoperable encryption standards. Without export restrictions we could have had most traffic encrypted as the default option by now.
This is done using the technology export regulations because that's the tool they have. If they didn't have that they'd find some other way to do it.
Slashdot Mirror
A wonderful little program (5.5k) by Tim Clarke called MARS.EXE let you move with your mouse through shaded voxel-based martian terrain under a cloudy sky. It an at fantastic speed even on a 386.
Read the original usenet posting here.
The open source advocates never said that nothing else but open source could work. They said that open source *works*, and works well. I tend to agree.
KDE, Gnome, Linux kernel - with all due respect to Theo and OpenBSD, I think they are larger in scope than fine-tuning and improving the security of an existing operating system. I don't think projects of this magnitude could have been done without massive open-source community involvement.
The so-called Nemesis theory is about 14 years old - a large planet with extremely long period deflects comets from the Oort cloud and is responsible for mass extinctions like the dinosaurs which appear to be happening periodically.
The new thing here is that someone has actually calculated a probable orbit.
As I see it he means that the orbits of the comets he studied, their vectors and timing have only a 1:1700 of having the relationship they have by chance, without a single large body deflecting them (assuming his math is correct, that is)
Bruce Schneier is a very nice guy and has done a lot to popularize cryptography and fight common misconceptions about cryptography. However, I still think that if he had made a breakthrough in cryptography of the same magniture as RSA he would have patented it.
The fact that he made Blowfish free is not an indication - what would he have to gain by patenting it? Another patented symmetric algorithm which nobody but Counterpane would use? This way, he got a lot of publicity and good feelings from the community.
Maybe it's not a community to you. It doesn't reall feel like a community for me but I can certainly see how for some this website could be more than just news for nerds.
After all, this site and everything in it is written by people. Getting a group of people together and communicating should be pretty close to anyone's definition of a community.
I know what you mean... I felt the same when I downloaded cygwin32 and saw the GPL in the license box in InstallShield. It really feels great to see the GPL in a place where you are used to seeing the usual restrictive licenses.
The wrong assumption is that is is a result of Microsoft foresight - the leaked debug symbols reveals the second key to be an NSA key. The analysis about being able to replace one either voluntarily or maliciously is still correct.
I downloaded xfstt just to discover that Red Hat 6.0 already supports TrueType.
These fonts were created by Monotype and are superbly hinted for display at low resolutions. They are freely available for use (with some restrictions on distribution).
Hint: if you don't have access to a Windows machine for running the self-installing executable download the "Windows 16 bit" versions which are actually self-extracting zips. Info-zip can handle them. Links to the fonts are here
BTW - The x font server which comes with Red Hat 6.0 supports TrueType.
08/15/1999 - AntiSniff mentioned on CryptoGram
08/17/1999 - Submitted to Slashdot by anonymous reader
Of the 36 million addresses in their list many are unused, part of modem dialup pools, assigned to router ports, running NT, etc. The percentage of UNIX servers which are vulnerable would be much higher.
I wouldn't want begin to guess the percentage of vulnerable NT machines...
Your immune system destroys a significant percentage of your throat lining cells as it battles a common cold. That's why you have a sore throat. In fact, ALL the symptoms you feel are a result of your immune system, not the invading viruses.
Do you really want an anti-viral software which destroys half your files to just to get rid of the virus?
NASA's claims that these 10% is all it needs to run these huge projects is basically admitting that the remaining 90% of its budget is wasted on feeding bureaucrats.
NASA's current budget, adjusted for inflation is about the same as it was at the peak of the Apollo program.
The european Digital Audio Broadcast (DAB) standard is not spread spectrum.
To gain resistance to fading caused by multipath interference a signal needs to be a few megahertz wide.
In the case of cellular phones the narrow data signal is spread my mixing it with a higher rate spreading sequence.
DAB works differently: it aggregates a large number of compressed audio signals and transmits them using one high-rate carrier.
Another reason why DAB is so efficient is that it is possible to transmit the same signal from several transmitters covering overlapping areas and the signals will not interfere with each other in the overlapping zones. A regular radio station has a small area where the signal is received with good quality and a very large zone where reception is poor but the frequency cannot be reused. DAB can cover an entire continent with continous coverage of the same signal - good, but only for big centralized broadcasters.
I'm afraid that any public access to DAB transmission will be more similar to the cable model.
My email address is hiding somewhere deep within the credits file of an obscure utility included with most distributions. At first I thought that was the reason I got the email. But then I noticed that the destination address is one of the throwaway aliases I use to reduce spam. I traced it back to a bug report I filed at redhat.
I find that insulting...
E*Trade is going to be getting thousands of new customers, each will deposit at least $1000. None of them are assured to actually get shares.
In fact, I don't remember any real S.F. movies
in the last few years except Gattaca
As long as you don't replace ALL employees at the same time, something remains. New people assimilate the values and the spirit of the team and pass it on.
Let's assume that the last engineer who actually worked for Commodore left 5 years ago - I'm still sure that if you step into their development facility and speak with the people for a while you will feel something about the atmosphere which is not Mac, not Linux/Unix and definitely not Microsoft. And it's this kind of thing that makes great software.
Even if you ignore the actual code base, there's definitely something left.
"They are useful in situations where there is a trusted path from the reader to the verifier" (Schneier, Aug 98 Crypto-Gram)
Since the ATM is built as a safe, saying there is a trusted path from reader to verifier would almost be an understatement in this case.
Trying to use biometrics for "securing" remote logins would be pathetic, unless you are using tamper resistant readers that sign their biometric reading + with timestamp or challenge to prevent replay attacks. And be sure keep some way to revoke reader credentials in case a reader signing key is compromised.
Of course the reports eventually give a fuller account, but what people remember (a.k.a. "The Truth" or "Reality") is the made-for-TV solemn announcements.
It's consistent with the official statements about the Apollo 204 pad fire - it sounds much more heroic and clean to hear that Roger Chaffee, Gus Grissom and Ed White were "killed instantly" rather than struggled for a minute to open the hatch before the hull ruptured.
Or Challenger - it's more heroic to think that they went up with a flame than to know the truth - the damaged orbiter, passenger compartment virtually intact flew for a few more minutes in a ballistic trajectory until it crashed into the water. The astronauts died on impact.
This patronizing attitude from governments officials who think they know better about what we should or shouldn't be allowed to know about what is being done with our money is certainly not as strong as it was 30 years ago, but it's still with us.
In a way, I can understand them, tough. They were trying to protect their budgets which depended on public image. And these budgets did send my childhood heroes into orbit and to the moon...
P.S. NASA's budget, adjusted for inflation, is almost at big as it was at the peak of the Apollo program.
Hey, this kind of claims reminds me of cold fusion - you really wish was actually true. The major difference is that this is probably nothing more than words on a web page while in those cold fusion cells something was actually happening, although probably not fusion.
I don't think anyone in the US government actually thinks that only the US has good crypto and that export restrictions really limit the availability of strong crypto outside the US.
They may appear to act dumb at time, but this is a result of politics, not stupidity.
Export restrictions are actually working very well to limit the widespread acceptance of interoperable encryption standards. Without export restrictions we could have had most traffic encrypted as the default option by now.
This is done using the technology export regulations because that's the tool they have. If they didn't have that they'd find some other way to do it.
The WorldSpace consortium is mostly targeting the international market but it will have some coverage in the US.
Unlike some other proposals, it's not a pay-per-listen service - no encryption or anything.
The transmission format will be MP3. It would be interesting to rip one of their receivers, interface it to a PC and record MP3 off the air...
It's got a big disk.
It's in your living room, connected to your sound system.
To me this says "MP3!"
Is it an open architecture?