Why can't they just eliminate header files first?
Why is C/C++ practically the only language that requires headers?
Why do I need to type each function declaration twice. It is so cumbersome!
There is interface, and there is implementation. I want the interface of everything, but only the implementation of the one thing I'm working on.
Java is horrible because it mixes interface and implementation, making it impossible to look just at the interface.
C is fine, and C++ is fine if you don't allow yourself to be carried away, becaue you can separate interface and implementation. C++ can contain a mix of interface and implementation, especially when written by Java educated people.
The problem is of course programming languages that require separate files for interface and implementation, and IDEs that cannot separate the interface out for the developer to read, when he or she isn't interested in the implementation.
If you're good, you don't need to work 70 hour weeks.
Whether you are good or not, if you work 70 hours a week you are (1) a first rate idiot for allowing yourself to be exploited unless you are paid by the hour, you are (2) not good anymore because you are too tired to be any use, and (3) whatever manager or boss talks you into or allows you to work 70 hours a week is a moron because of (2).
yep if you turn down work offered by the job center you get sanctioned ie have your benefits removed - no matter that you might have 30+years of NI contributions
The problem of the person with 30+ years of NI contributions is that they don't know how to play the game. You don't turn down the work. You go to a job interview and make sure they don't accept you.
Internet censorship, in any way, shape, or form, is wrong,...
Well, no, I wouldn't agree with this. There is certainly stuff out there that should be censored (and the people putting it up should be put into jail).
However, filtering this out completely is impossible, and I very much suspect that attempting to filter it out is done with the intention of filtering out contents that people _should_ be allowed to see, that is helpful, but doesn't fit someone's agenda.
Note, however, that proving that ECC or RSA are breakable does not require a proof of P=NP or P!=NP -- for example, you don't need fast factoring to break RSA.
I think Knuth showed that having a fast algorithm for breaking RSA could be used for fast factoring of numbers, therefore RSA and factoring have about the same degree of difficulty.
Remember the panic in Britain when the (WW2) German submarine service switched from 3-rotor to 4-rotor Enigma machines! They hadn't finished a "bombe" got 4-rotor machines, and only broke the 4-rotor code when they captured an undamaged 4-rotor machine.
I think you are not getting the details right here at all. Britain was never capable of cracking an Enigma with four rotors from scratch. However, the daily settings for the four rotor machine were the same as for messages sent to three rotor enigmas, with an additional rotor added. And the rotor was taken from the existing set of eight rotors. So Bletchley Park broke the code for the 3 rotor enigma, end then tried 5 rotors with 26 different settings to crack the 4 rotors enigma.
Do you find OS X intuitive? They've had hot corners for a very long time and everyone keeps raving on how intuitive their OS is. Also Win 8.1 when freshly installed (not sure about OEM) gives you a tutorial. If you are too busy to RTFM when the manual is already opened for you to the correct page, with highlighted mouse movements and animations then you deserve what you get.
Hot corners are a power user feature on MacOS X. You don't need them.
From personal experience, lots of people with no Mac experience whatsoever and little computer experience have come to my home and used my MacBook without any explanation. Some of the same people have got Windows 8 laptops and cannot figure out how to use them, after trying hard for some time. Comments like "my photos are somewhere on this computer, but I cannot find them".
On what grounds? They'll just say "It's a bug, we're working on a patch". Has anyone ever been able to get a refund because of a software bug?
Excuse me, but accepting commands and executing scripts received on an unusual port is not a bug. That is code that is there 100% intentional. In the UK, I'd call it defective; it would be pretty obvious that it was defective as sold, so you can return it to the shop where you bought it for a reasonable time (maybe 2 years).
If 16 million other companies do this we're TOTALLY SCREWED!
If 16 million other companies do this, then we still have enough for 777,000 more companies. And these should really be for some kind of manufacturers. Like Apple or HP or Dell might have gone through a few dozen of these, but not much more unless they were careless.
I can't comment on "Atlas Shrugged", although I often see it mentioned as justification for some horrible nonsense being posted.
I did download and listen to Ayn Rand's "Anthem" however, and what a piece of shit it is. Unbelievable characters, including a totally unbelievable protagonist, escaping from a totally unbelievable post-whatever society. I had the vague impression that the author was trying to tell the reader something, but that whatever that message was, it had nothing to do with any sane world.
Actually read TFA, enough flew over my head that I can't personally verify the math, but if true, well holy fucking shit. Once someone brute-forces the backdoor "key" used by the NSA, it looks like the entire system is cracked. Even if it takes a while to brute-force, once you have that you can open any encryption using that curve.
It's quite possible that this cannot be brute forced. The only way is to create the back door at the time that the random number generator is created. In the end, that is the _first_ requirement: That an arbitrary attacker, given a complete description of the algorithm, cannot brute force it.
It seems to me that anything we thought were encrypted and could be, and was, considered secure in that embodiment, is soon subject to revelation. I'm no expert, but I'm losing faith in these algorithms. Please tell me it's going to be okay. PS: if you are NSA, I don't need your reassurances.
Don't worry. It was known for quite a while that this algorithm _might_ have been backdoored. There are basically three possibilities:
1. The NSA didn't know that it could be backdoored when they created it. So there is no backdoor, and the NSA is kicking themselves for that missed opportunity, or for the embarrassment. 2. They knew about it, but intentionally didn't create a backdoor. 3. They knew about it and created a backdoor.
From looking at the algorithm, we cannot possibly know which one is the case. Obviously it would be totally insane to use this algorithm. But that _was_ known for quite some time.
The apple philosophy is perfectly consistent with that of the NSA, the security state, and fascism in general. Add on some friendly govt subsidies and freedom to continue abusing the hell out of the american tax system...
That's pretty idiotic. Apple's walled garden is there to protect customers, including their privacy, by preventing certain unwise choices. That has negative consequences sometimes, but everything in life is some compromise. Worst case that happens to you as the customer is a slightly reduced choice in software that you can run on the iPhone, including lots of software that is either rubbish or harmful. What the NSA and fascist states do is something completely different.
I understand your dread of entering the U.S. (though you say you have only "read" about "horror stories" and not actually done it yourself), but this is a common misconception. The U.S. Constitution applies to every person in the country, even if they are there illegally, with some obvious exceptions, such as the right to vote.
There have been plenty of posts here in Slashdot saying the exact opposite, so I would be curious about what is the truth. It seems to be the case that you can be refused entrance based on someone in the USA illegally accessing confidential medical records in Canada. What you say also seems to be different for example from German laws, which apply to _anyone_ _anywhere_ except that Germany only enforces it in Germany. "The constitution applies to every person in the country" is used as an excuse to break the laws in other countries.
Not one word that comes out of the mouth of any employee of any US company can be trusted, because US law DEMANDS that such employees LIE about any NSA operation carried out by their company, under penalty of legal punishments INCLUDING the death penalty.
No, it doesn't. It can require people to be silent, it can't require them to lie.
Also, it looks like the NSA basically require companies to say "we don't have anything to do with the NSA". If anything, the company's feeling the need to come out and say it so publically is a red flag that they may have worked with them.
That is nonsense. The NSA cannot require any company to lie. They may be able to require a company to be silent, but they cannot require a company to lie.
And your logic is the kind of logic typically used by wives and girlfriends. Assuming meaning and intention that isn't there.
What makes you think Apple would break the law and admit they helped the NSA (sure they signed NDA beforehand)?
There are laws that prevent companies from saying things. There are no laws that can force a company to lie. Actually, there are laws that make it illegal for a publicly traded company to lie about certain things.
So possible things that Apple could do are:
1. Say "we helped the NSA" - illegal and stupid if they did, illegal and stupid if they didn't.
2. Say nothing. Perfectly legal. Possibly a hint that they helped the NSA, because you'd want to tell the world if you didn't.
3. Say "we didn't help the NSA" - illegal if they did, perfectly legal if they didn't.
You can try this [google.com] tool to check your existing DNS for performance and behaviour. Google's is very well behaved by the way, so please don't spread FUD.
"I wouldn't trust Google" isn't FUD, it's common sense. Remember that you are not Google's customer. You are Google's product.
About creating that guest account - I have NEVER let anyone 'borrow' my laptop. It is mine, passworded, encrypted and the whole nine yards.
MacOS X has a nice feature - even with full-disk encryption turned on, you can log in as a guest with Safari as the only application. Hard drive is still encrypted except for a small partition.
atheism is specifically the belief that no deities exist, and as such as as religious as the religions that atheists love to ridicule
With the important difference that atheism is much more supported by the amount of evidence for anything that could reasonably be called "god", which is exactly zero. And there's the moral point of view. Atheists can't blame some god for what they do or for what happens in the world, they can't ask anyone for forgiveness, but they have to lead a life so they can live with the person that stares back at them when they look into the mirror.
But everything else he's up to, talking about spying on Merkel's phone calls and the like, that does nothing but hurt US interests. I'm not talking about the Federal Government's interests, but the interests of all Americans.
The people who did this are, according to German laws, criminals. If their identities were known, they wouldn't be able legally to enter any EU country. If the USA hire criminals, then the hiring of criminals is hurting them, not the fact that it is exposed.
I've responded to this kind of comment previously. The fact is your rights in your country do not necessarily translate to the US. Furthermore it's of questionable legal status whether a non-us citizen on non-us soil has any of our Constitutional rights.
So the next time I meet in American in Britain, it's OK if I punch him on the nose?
It's not OK, because I live in a civilised country. Apparently Americans don't, but that isn't news.
The standard rumor is that they they all violate bogus patents rampantly and only by keeping their code secret (and possibly backdoored) can they stay afloat, in face of the patent trolls.
The other reason would be that if NVidia engineers could read the documentation needed to write ATI drivers and vice versa, they would figure out some clever ideas that their competitor had and reproduce them. If you make more and more powerful cards, you always need new clever ideas how you turn more transistors into more speed. You run into bottlenecks that weren't bottlenecks when you had a quarter of the transistors. Since Intel integrated graphics is quite a bit behind in that respect, Intel is probably doing clever things that ATI and NVidia would have been glad to know four years ago.
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Why can't they just eliminate header files first?
Why is C/C++ practically the only language that requires headers?
Why do I need to type each function declaration twice. It is so cumbersome!
There is interface, and there is implementation. I want the interface of everything, but only the implementation of the one thing I'm working on.
Java is horrible because it mixes interface and implementation, making it impossible to look just at the interface.
C is fine, and C++ is fine if you don't allow yourself to be carried away, becaue you can separate interface and implementation. C++ can contain a mix of interface and implementation, especially when written by Java educated people.
The problem is of course programming languages that require separate files for interface and implementation, and IDEs that cannot separate the interface out for the developer to read, when he or she isn't interested in the implementation.
If you're good, you don't need to work 70 hour weeks.
Whether you are good or not, if you work 70 hours a week you are (1) a first rate idiot for allowing yourself to be exploited unless you are paid by the hour, you are (2) not good anymore because you are too tired to be any use, and (3) whatever manager or boss talks you into or allows you to work 70 hours a week is a moron because of (2).
yep if you turn down work offered by the job center you get sanctioned ie have your benefits removed - no matter that you might have 30+years of NI contributions
The problem of the person with 30+ years of NI contributions is that they don't know how to play the game. You don't turn down the work. You go to a job interview and make sure they don't accept you.
Internet censorship, in any way, shape, or form, is wrong,...
Well, no, I wouldn't agree with this. There is certainly stuff out there that should be censored (and the people putting it up should be put into jail).
However, filtering this out completely is impossible, and I very much suspect that attempting to filter it out is done with the intention of filtering out contents that people _should_ be allowed to see, that is helpful, but doesn't fit someone's agenda.
Note, however, that proving that ECC or RSA are breakable does not require a proof of P=NP or P!=NP -- for example, you don't need fast factoring to break RSA.
I think Knuth showed that having a fast algorithm for breaking RSA could be used for fast factoring of numbers, therefore RSA and factoring have about the same degree of difficulty.
Remember the panic in Britain when the (WW2) German submarine service switched from 3-rotor to 4-rotor Enigma machines! They hadn't finished a "bombe" got 4-rotor machines, and only broke the 4-rotor code when they captured an undamaged 4-rotor machine.
I think you are not getting the details right here at all. Britain was never capable of cracking an Enigma with four rotors from scratch. However, the daily settings for the four rotor machine were the same as for messages sent to three rotor enigmas, with an additional rotor added. And the rotor was taken from the existing set of eight rotors. So Bletchley Park broke the code for the 3 rotor enigma, end then tried 5 rotors with 26 different settings to crack the 4 rotors enigma.
And if the NSA could keep its hands off of domestic data, that wouldn't be an issue,
Not in the USA, but I think any NSA employee travelling to the EU should be arrested on the spot.
Do you find OS X intuitive? They've had hot corners for a very long time and everyone keeps raving on how intuitive their OS is. Also Win 8.1 when freshly installed (not sure about OEM) gives you a tutorial. If you are too busy to RTFM when the manual is already opened for you to the correct page, with highlighted mouse movements and animations then you deserve what you get.
Hot corners are a power user feature on MacOS X. You don't need them.
From personal experience, lots of people with no Mac experience whatsoever and little computer experience have come to my home and used my MacBook without any explanation. Some of the same people have got Windows 8 laptops and cannot figure out how to use them, after trying hard for some time. Comments like "my photos are somewhere on this computer, but I cannot find them".
On what grounds? They'll just say "It's a bug, we're working on a patch". Has anyone ever been able to get a refund because of a software bug?
Excuse me, but accepting commands and executing scripts received on an unusual port is not a bug. That is code that is there 100% intentional. In the UK, I'd call it defective; it would be pretty obvious that it was defective as sold, so you can return it to the shop where you bought it for a reasonable time (maybe 2 years).
If 16 million other companies do this we're TOTALLY SCREWED!
If 16 million other companies do this, then we still have enough for 777,000 more companies. And these should really be for some kind of manufacturers. Like Apple or HP or Dell might have gone through a few dozen of these, but not much more unless they were careless.
I can't comment on "Atlas Shrugged", although I often see it mentioned as justification for some horrible nonsense being posted.
I did download and listen to Ayn Rand's "Anthem" however, and what a piece of shit it is. Unbelievable characters, including a totally unbelievable protagonist, escaping from a totally unbelievable post-whatever society. I had the vague impression that the author was trying to tell the reader something, but that whatever that message was, it had nothing to do with any sane world.
Actually read TFA, enough flew over my head that I can't personally verify the math, but if true, well holy fucking shit. Once someone brute-forces the backdoor "key" used by the NSA, it looks like the entire system is cracked. Even if it takes a while to brute-force, once you have that you can open any encryption using that curve.
It's quite possible that this cannot be brute forced. The only way is to create the back door at the time that the random number generator is created. In the end, that is the _first_ requirement: That an arbitrary attacker, given a complete description of the algorithm, cannot brute force it.
It seems to me that anything we thought were encrypted and could be, and was, considered secure in that embodiment, is soon subject to revelation. I'm no expert, but I'm losing faith in these algorithms. Please tell me it's going to be okay. PS: if you are NSA, I don't need your reassurances.
Don't worry. It was known for quite a while that this algorithm _might_ have been backdoored. There are basically three possibilities:
1. The NSA didn't know that it could be backdoored when they created it. So there is no backdoor, and the NSA is kicking themselves for that missed opportunity, or for the embarrassment. 2. They knew about it, but intentionally didn't create a backdoor. 3. They knew about it and created a backdoor.
From looking at the algorithm, we cannot possibly know which one is the case. Obviously it would be totally insane to use this algorithm. But that _was_ known for quite some time.
The apple philosophy is perfectly consistent with that of the NSA, the security state, and fascism in general. Add on some friendly govt subsidies and freedom to continue abusing the hell out of the american tax system...
That's pretty idiotic. Apple's walled garden is there to protect customers, including their privacy, by preventing certain unwise choices. That has negative consequences sometimes, but everything in life is some compromise. Worst case that happens to you as the customer is a slightly reduced choice in software that you can run on the iPhone, including lots of software that is either rubbish or harmful. What the NSA and fascist states do is something completely different.
I understand your dread of entering the U.S. (though you say you have only "read" about "horror stories" and not actually done it yourself), but this is a common misconception. The U.S. Constitution applies to every person in the country, even if they are there illegally, with some obvious exceptions, such as the right to vote.
There have been plenty of posts here in Slashdot saying the exact opposite, so I would be curious about what is the truth. It seems to be the case that you can be refused entrance based on someone in the USA illegally accessing confidential medical records in Canada. What you say also seems to be different for example from German laws, which apply to _anyone_ _anywhere_ except that Germany only enforces it in Germany. "The constitution applies to every person in the country" is used as an excuse to break the laws in other countries.
Not one word that comes out of the mouth of any employee of any US company can be trusted, because US law DEMANDS that such employees LIE about any NSA operation carried out by their company, under penalty of legal punishments INCLUDING the death penalty.
No, it doesn't. It can require people to be silent, it can't require them to lie.
Also, it looks like the NSA basically require companies to say "we don't have anything to do with the NSA". If anything, the company's feeling the need to come out and say it so publically is a red flag that they may have worked with them.
That is nonsense. The NSA cannot require any company to lie. They may be able to require a company to be silent, but they cannot require a company to lie.
And your logic is the kind of logic typically used by wives and girlfriends. Assuming meaning and intention that isn't there.
What makes you think Apple would break the law and admit they helped the NSA (sure they signed NDA beforehand)?
There are laws that prevent companies from saying things. There are no laws that can force a company to lie. Actually, there are laws that make it illegal for a publicly traded company to lie about certain things. So possible things that Apple could do are:
1. Say "we helped the NSA" - illegal and stupid if they did, illegal and stupid if they didn't.
2. Say nothing. Perfectly legal. Possibly a hint that they helped the NSA, because you'd want to tell the world if you didn't.
3. Say "we didn't help the NSA" - illegal if they did, perfectly legal if they didn't.
What Apple deserves to be bashed over is the ridiculous claim of industry leading security.
So which phone has better security, and why?
You can try this [google.com] tool to check your existing DNS for performance and behaviour. Google's is very well behaved by the way, so please don't spread FUD.
"I wouldn't trust Google" isn't FUD, it's common sense. Remember that you are not Google's customer. You are Google's product.
About creating that guest account - I have NEVER let anyone 'borrow' my laptop. It is mine, passworded, encrypted and the whole nine yards.
MacOS X has a nice feature - even with full-disk encryption turned on, you can log in as a guest with Safari as the only application. Hard drive is still encrypted except for a small partition.
atheism is specifically the belief that no deities exist, and as such as as religious as the religions that atheists love to ridicule
With the important difference that atheism is much more supported by the amount of evidence for anything that could reasonably be called "god", which is exactly zero. And there's the moral point of view. Atheists can't blame some god for what they do or for what happens in the world, they can't ask anyone for forgiveness, but they have to lead a life so they can live with the person that stares back at them when they look into the mirror.
But everything else he's up to, talking about spying on Merkel's phone calls and the like, that does nothing but hurt US interests. I'm not talking about the Federal Government's interests, but the interests of all Americans.
The people who did this are, according to German laws, criminals. If their identities were known, they wouldn't be able legally to enter any EU country. If the USA hire criminals, then the hiring of criminals is hurting them, not the fact that it is exposed.
I've responded to this kind of comment previously. The fact is your rights in your country do not necessarily translate to the US. Furthermore it's of questionable legal status whether a non-us citizen on non-us soil has any of our Constitutional rights.
So the next time I meet in American in Britain, it's OK if I punch him on the nose?
It's not OK, because I live in a civilised country. Apparently Americans don't, but that isn't news.
The standard rumor is that they they all violate bogus patents rampantly and only by keeping their code secret (and possibly backdoored) can they stay afloat, in face of the patent trolls.
The other reason would be that if NVidia engineers could read the documentation needed to write ATI drivers and vice versa, they would figure out some clever ideas that their competitor had and reproduce them. If you make more and more powerful cards, you always need new clever ideas how you turn more transistors into more speed. You run into bottlenecks that weren't bottlenecks when you had a quarter of the transistors. Since Intel integrated graphics is quite a bit behind in that respect, Intel is probably doing clever things that ATI and NVidia would have been glad to know four years ago.