It obviously is a defect in Democracy. What the exact nature of the defect is, is still not really known, maybe because modern democracy is only about 100 years old or so. One problem is that there are rather severe limits in some aspects of what voters can manage to do. For example, create fear and they will submit gladly to anybody that promises security, regardless how false that claim is.
On the other hand, this is neither new or unknown. For example, Hitler was voted into office. Sure, it was a minority government (I think 35% of votes or something like that), but it was a legitimate democratic process that made him chancellor. That was the boost-step he needed to take over.
So this problem is not only old and well known, it already had catastrophic consequences in the past, and unfortunately, while the safeguards put into place do protect against a fast catastrophe, they do seem to fail against a slow erosion process. It is a little bit like boiling a frog: Turn up the heat to full, the frog notices and jumps out of the water. Turn it up very slowly, and the frog does not notice and dies. (Frogs have variable body-temperature and only notice fast changes.) If you look into the press and the web, there are still very large groups of people that think how the police behaves in the US is perfectly fine, and all those shot, tortured and killed are just "criminals" that had it coming anyways. Add to that that there basically is the political choice between a conservative party and an extreme conservative party, and the picture becomes really clear: The US democracy has become completely corrupted by very successful voter manipulation and a perception of reality based on propaganda, not on reality.
Unfortunately, this always leads to a totalitarian state. If the populations does not set hard boundaries for bureaucrats and politicians again and again, control is always wrested from the population eventually, and the catastrophe will happen. There is also the problem, now very obvious in the US, that the courts are thoroughly in the pocket of the state (after all they are a part of it) and will become more and more servants of power and "the law" will become a pure tool of oppression.
Well, it really is not like this has not happened before. Unfortunately, the human race has not (not yet, I hope) learned to reliably prevent it.
Or somebody is. Possibly some PR person at their university with zero clue. What they have is that shining the second laser seems to decrease tunneling. This could be a measurement error, it could be an unexpected, yet perfectly fine different effect, and it could, if all else is reliably being ruled out, indeed be the effect claimed. But making physical measurements is very tricky and misinterpreting the results is very easy.
Remember the guys that measured FTL particles and asked for help because they (sanely) did not believe their results? And remember all the nonsense the press wrote? Turned out to be a faulty connector, after all.
Actually, because of their special powers, cops need to be held to much higher standards. These days it seems they are held to much, much lower standards.
When is the last time that an US policeman has been "stepping into a hostile crowd alone"? These days they are mostly cowards that will not dare anything unless they are sure that they can kill them all. Sure, not all of them, possibly not even a majority, but the number of utter scum in police uniforms is staggering.
Policemen _must_ be held to a much higher standard or they become common thugs.
By sane standards, the US is now a police state. A key indicator is that the law does not get applied to police members anymore. (There is still some residual rule-of-law that keeps them under some control, but this seems to be become less and less.) A police-state is one of the more benign forms of totalitarian state, but it usually devolves to full fascism over time.
Indeed. Nobody is forced to work as a policeman. But I have the impression a lot of people do this job for all the wrong reasons, namely being able to be violent without repercussions, to wield authority that they would never ever have been able to earn personally, etc. It is almost like some type of criminal found becoming a policeman the perfect solution to their desires. And, unlike in sane states, the US does not seem to filter these people out anymore. That is what typically happens in a police-state: You want violent goons as policemen to keep the population in fear and timid. This call to essentially ignore crime committed by policemen fits that picture perfectly.
For example, murders are typically not stopped by police at all as they are very rarely crimes of opportunity. This person must know that. That he choses to ignore this knowledge is is a very bad sign, but what do you expect from the chief official of a police-state. What he also completely ignores is that some of the officers that have become "video sensations" are cold-blooded murderers. He seems to imply that these scum being caught is somehow a bad thing. Another strong indicator the US is a de-facto police-state, because only in a police-state is catching criminal policemen a bad thing.
Yes, but I found that the mix of upper and lowercase letters is far, far more difficult to remember than just lowercase ones. For more bits just make it longer. Incidentally, 80 bits is about the spot were it will be secure for "the foreseeable future", so 119 bits is not really any better than 103 bits.
The problem might be that a simple nod at the wrong place can disclose classified information. And yes, this person was very much dependent on her clearance. The absolute requirement to report anything relevant, even things that are not really that hard to find out, effectively gags them and they cannot be part of a civilized conversation between adults anymore.
Which is stupid anyways. If it is compromised by a competent attacker, then 3 months are far, far too long. If it is not compromised, then there is really no reason to change it.
I use randomly generated passwords of lowercase letters and numbers. Most "password checkers" tell me they are insecure. This just shows how bad they are. Bit it is good that somebody did a systematic evaluation of the problem. Maybe now the stupidity will decrease.
That sounds more sensible. $3500 only pays for something like 2-3 days though for a competent and senior engineer, so these should probably be called "tiny" projects.
I beg to disagree. When I talk to some fellow researcher about my work, and suddenly she gets an expression of fear in her face, clamps up and runs away, that is something that does impact me. My impression is you are sugar-coating to an extensive degree in your statement.
You may not read secret material anymore unless specifically authorized to. Yes, that includes if it is printed in the NY Times. You also have to report certain types of conversations. I accidentally did that to somebody with a clearance a while back and had that explained to me afterwards. (I don't have a clearance, but have done research outside of the US that is at least "secret" there and may well be classified quite a bit higher.)
It is quite clear why that is. If, in the US, you have a clearance, you may not look at secret material anymore unless specifically authorized to. For example, reading the Snowden documents while you have a security clearance is a crime. For that reason, if you do security research, the only sane thing is to refuse a clearance even if offered.
Slashdot Mirror
You can use "u8" string literals. If you specify the right compiler options. For C++ that has to be C++11. You cannot use UTF-8 in identifiers.
So, no, gcc is not insane, but you have no clue what you are talking about.
It is indeed not.
It obviously is a defect in Democracy. What the exact nature of the defect is, is still not really known, maybe because modern democracy is only about 100 years old or so. One problem is that there are rather severe limits in some aspects of what voters can manage to do. For example, create fear and they will submit gladly to anybody that promises security, regardless how false that claim is.
On the other hand, this is neither new or unknown. For example, Hitler was voted into office. Sure, it was a minority government (I think 35% of votes or something like that), but it was a legitimate democratic process that made him chancellor. That was the boost-step he needed to take over.
So this problem is not only old and well known, it already had catastrophic consequences in the past, and unfortunately, while the safeguards put into place do protect against a fast catastrophe, they do seem to fail against a slow erosion process. It is a little bit like boiling a frog: Turn up the heat to full, the frog notices and jumps out of the water. Turn it up very slowly, and the frog does not notice and dies. (Frogs have variable body-temperature and only notice fast changes.) If you look into the press and the web, there are still very large groups of people that think how the police behaves in the US is perfectly fine, and all those shot, tortured and killed are just "criminals" that had it coming anyways. Add to that that there basically is the political choice between a conservative party and an extreme conservative party, and the picture becomes really clear: The US democracy has become completely corrupted by very successful voter manipulation and a perception of reality based on propaganda, not on reality.
Unfortunately, this always leads to a totalitarian state. If the populations does not set hard boundaries for bureaucrats and politicians again and again, control is always wrested from the population eventually, and the catastrophe will happen. There is also the problem, now very obvious in the US, that the courts are thoroughly in the pocket of the state (after all they are a part of it) and will become more and more servants of power and "the law" will become a pure tool of oppression.
Well, it really is not like this has not happened before. Unfortunately, the human race has not (not yet, I hope) learned to reliably prevent it.
And that is just the point. Everybody covering for the "asshole" becomes an accomplice and is not really any better.
Math notation is a good analogy.
Ever heard of escaping things? Apparently not. Sane languages do not even allow you to use Unicode in source code and sane compilers reject it.
Unicode in code is for people that do not understand what they are doing.
Or somebody is. Possibly some PR person at their university with zero clue. What they have is that shining the second laser seems to decrease tunneling. This could be a measurement error, it could be an unexpected, yet perfectly fine different effect, and it could, if all else is reliably being ruled out, indeed be the effect claimed. But making physical measurements is very tricky and misinterpreting the results is very easy.
Remember the guys that measured FTL particles and asked for help because they (sanely) did not believe their results? And remember all the nonsense the press wrote? Turned out to be a faulty connector, after all.
Actually, because of their special powers, cops need to be held to much higher standards. These days it seems they are held to much, much lower standards.
When is the last time that an US policeman has been "stepping into a hostile crowd alone"? These days they are mostly cowards that will not dare anything unless they are sure that they can kill them all. Sure, not all of them, possibly not even a majority, but the number of utter scum in police uniforms is staggering.
Policemen _must_ be held to a much higher standard or they become common thugs.
By sane standards, the US is now a police state. A key indicator is that the law does not get applied to police members anymore. (There is still some residual rule-of-law that keeps them under some control, but this seems to be become less and less.) A police-state is one of the more benign forms of totalitarian state, but it usually devolves to full fascism over time.
Indeed. Nobody is forced to work as a policeman. But I have the impression a lot of people do this job for all the wrong reasons, namely being able to be violent without repercussions, to wield authority that they would never ever have been able to earn personally, etc. It is almost like some type of criminal found becoming a policeman the perfect solution to their desires. And, unlike in sane states, the US does not seem to filter these people out anymore. That is what typically happens in a police-state: You want violent goons as policemen to keep the population in fear and timid. This call to essentially ignore crime committed by policemen fits that picture perfectly.
For example, murders are typically not stopped by police at all as they are very rarely crimes of opportunity. This person must know that. That he choses to ignore this knowledge is is a very bad sign, but what do you expect from the chief official of a police-state. What he also completely ignores is that some of the officers that have become "video sensations" are cold-blooded murderers. He seems to imply that these scum being caught is somehow a bad thing. Another strong indicator the US is a de-facto police-state, because only in a police-state is catching criminal policemen a bad thing.
And a competent attacker needs maybe a day. So this policy is exceptionally stupid even taking your argument into account.
Yes, but I found that the mix of upper and lowercase letters is far, far more difficult to remember than just lowercase ones. For more bits just make it longer. Incidentally, 80 bits is about the spot were it will be secure for "the foreseeable future", so 119 bits is not really any better than 103 bits.
Depends on what security I need. Low-security: 8 chars, higher 12 chars, max 20 chars. That is 41 bit, 62 bit and 103 bit of entropy, roughly.
The problem might be that a simple nod at the wrong place can disclose classified information. And yes, this person was very much dependent on her clearance. The absolute requirement to report anything relevant, even things that are not really that hard to find out, effectively gags them and they cannot be part of a civilized conversation between adults anymore.
Which is stupid anyways. If it is compromised by a competent attacker, then 3 months are far, far too long. If it is not compromised, then there is really no reason to change it.
I use randomly generated passwords of lowercase letters and numbers. Most "password checkers" tell me they are insecure. This just shows how bad they are. Bit it is good that somebody did a systematic evaluation of the problem. Maybe now the stupidity will decrease.
That sounds more sensible. $3500 only pays for something like 2-3 days though for a competent and senior engineer, so these should probably be called "tiny" projects.
I beg to disagree. When I talk to some fellow researcher about my work, and suddenly she gets an expression of fear in her face, clamps up and runs away, that is something that does impact me. My impression is you are sugar-coating to an extensive degree in your statement.
One thing: If nothing decisive is being done very soon, things will get a _lot_ worse.
You may not read secret material anymore unless specifically authorized to. Yes, that includes if it is printed in the NY Times. You also have to report certain types of conversations. I accidentally did that to somebody with a clearance a while back and had that explained to me afterwards. (I don't have a clearance, but have done research outside of the US that is at least "secret" there and may well be classified quite a bit higher.)
So, yes, it taints you and significantly so.
It is quite clear why that is. If, in the US, you have a clearance, you may not look at secret material anymore unless specifically authorized to. For example, reading the Snowden documents while you have a security clearance is a crime. For that reason, if you do security research, the only sane thing is to refuse a clearance even if offered.
Non-encrypted one. Because, you know, security researchers do not know how to do that...