Was it not just a few months ago that the New York Times was complaining about how they had to protect their revenue stream and start enforcing a pay wall? Where did they get the money for such a pointless project?
GPs points are utterly incorrect, every modern OS for the last 7 or 8 years (possibly not Mac for a few years) has restricted content downloaded from the web to not "just run", and they all have mechanisms for declaring how files should run and whether they should run.
That's exactly what I saw happen in Windows the last time I watched someone use it: they downloaded a file from a website, and just ran it without any issue.
Here's a better question to ask: which official is going to wind up taking the fall for these wastes of tax dollars? So far, we know the following about these machines:
They are very expensive
Tests of the machines have shown that most knives and even guns can sneak through the machines undetected
They are outside of what the TSA itself considers safe
This was an obvious sweetheart deal, and someone is going to have to get in trouble for it. Obama or his successor will probably pardon that person, since it will just be a fall guy and nobody wants to start an investigation that would keep expanding until half of capitol hill was implicated.
The real failure of tablet computers was not as simple as "hurr durr they used a stylus." Desktop OSes are still designed for computers with keyboards; the mouse is only useful for launching programs and using files created by others. When it comes to writing an email, chatting, etc., the keyboard is still king; Steve Jobs was right on, and the truth of his statements has not changed. Modern tablets are winning because they run software that was designed to be far more graphical and "consumption oriented" -- a physical keyboard is not terribly important, and the software keyboard that is available is "good enough" for what people use their tablets for.
Except that the permissions on the file do matter. Processes are created using fork/exec, and you will not be able to call exec* on files that do not have execute permissions. This is not about your window manager or shell, it is about the permissions on files.
Wikileaks is dead, Openleaks is going nowhere, and traditional media outlets like the New York Times are not willing to publish certain things...so how do people publicize evidence of corruption? What are whistleblowers supposed to do, especially if the people they are blowing the whistle on are well connected and powerful?
Im simply firing back at someone who foolishly declared that NTFS's permissions were less "good" than ext3's, which is a load of rubbish if ive ever heard any.
It is not that they are "less good," it is that Windows (at least when I last saw someone using it) still assumes that if a file has ".exe" on the end of its name, it is an executable file, unless you configure different behavior. As far as I can tell, this is about convenience and the fact that users are so used to this behavior that they would not be willing to settle for something different. This is in contrast to most Unix-like OSes, where the filename is not relevant in determining whether or not the file can be executed, only the permissions are used.
Considering the way they attacked the journalists who picked up the new phone last time, I have trouble believing that they would actually try this strategy again -- who do they think is going to examine the phone this time? I understand that the corporate culture at Apple is "bend over and take it," but do they really think that the rest of the world is like that too?
The problem is that people are not generally aware of what a quantum computer would be useful for. Why should I care if there is a quantum computer sitting under my desk? How do I benefit from quantum algorithms?
There are indeed tangible benefits to quantum computing, beyond just attacking public key cryptosystems. As an example, quantum computers can speed up certain search algorithms, which is one of the promised commercial applications of a quantum computer.
Personally, I put quantum computers in the same technological category as fusion power. The world would be an exciting place if we had cold fusion, and we are just a few steps from having it...but those steps are measured in light years and involve practical and theoretical challenges that are hard to address. I have no doubt that some day, we will answer those questions and build fusion reactors and quantum computers, but I get the feeling that that day is pretty far off.
After all you can implement Lua and Prologue in C and then just compile that into your application and you're done.
Except that in Scheme, it is common to use a set of macros to implement another language's syntax within Scheme, so that you are just using the Scheme interpreter to interpret the other language. Prolog-in-Lisp is probably the most well known example of this sort of thing, although I have seen other things: Common-Lisp-in-Scheme, Scheme-in-Common-Lisp, Forth-in-Lisp, etc. In C, you wind up writing another interpreter; to get a mix of both C and the second language you are implementing, that interpreter would also have to understand C syntax (or do something like translate between languages).
If you're an extension language then there are certain things that should be the priority in the design: such as being smaller than the application it extends.
Which is why Scheme was chosen, rather than something like Common Lisp.
The reason Guile is a ugly
Who said Guile is ugly?
it's trying too hard to be a powerful programming language as its main goal and has no goal of being small and simple.
Guile implements Scheme; if you think Scheme is not simple enough, you must have never seen Common Lisp. Additionally, extension languages should be full-features programming languages in their own right; look at things like LaTeX or Emacs. The point of an extension language is to allow users to implement features that the original programmers had not envisioned, not just to write some simple command macros.
Remailers are still functional, although as far as I know they are mostly used for posting to Usenet. I am not sure if pseudonymous remailers are widely used these days, but mixmaster and cypherpunks remailers get a lot of traffic.
They didn't switch to Tcl because at the time, Tcl was not nearly powerful enough for what GNU wants their extension language to do. Tcl is an OK scripting language, but the GNU team wants an extension language that can reasonably be used to implement other languages (e.g. Prolog-in-Lisp), so that people are not limited to just your extension language (or to implementing an interpreter that runs in an interpreter; in lisp it is common to use macros and closures to enable the syntax of other languages to be used in a lisp program), and which makes it easy for an entire system to be built up using the extension language (e.g. Emacs). Lisp was not the other choice, and I would say that other systems have demonstrated that the core + large extensions codebase does not require everything that Guile promised (think of Matlab here), but to claim that Tcl was reject just because it was not written by GNU is just nonsense. The GNU team has implemented interpreters for numerous other languages that were rejected as the extension language.
Agencies like the NSA have the expertise, the money, and the infrastructure to own the majority of exit nodes.
I do not think anyone realistically believes that they can defeat the NSA. Yet there are numerous other government agencies in various countries around the world who do not have the capabilities that the NSA has, and who can do far greater harm than the NSA. Just because it would be difficult to defeat the world's most powerful and best funded signals intelligence agency does not mean that Tor or the anonymous remailer network are worthless.
Government: "What are you doing sending this encrypted data?!"
Citizen: "Encrypted?! That's just random bits that I was sending to my friend in America!"
Government: "Oh, never mind then. It's not like we have any reason to think that you would not be sending random bits to someone in America!"
How can one detect if a packet is encrypted? How do you distinguish unencrypted binary data from encrypted binary data?
Theoretically, you should not be able to distinguish encrypted bits from random data. Unfortunately, people almost never send megabytes of uniformly random bits to each other, and I doubt that the Pakistani courts are going to believe your claim that you were doing such a thing. You might claim that you were sending compressed data (which may also appear to be random), but then the courts are going to ask you how it was compressed, so that they can decompress it -- and when you tell them "LZMA" and they get random bits, they are going to throw you in prison.
Slashdot Mirror
Was it not just a few months ago that the New York Times was complaining about how they had to protect their revenue stream and start enforcing a pay wall? Where did they get the money for such a pointless project?
Hm...I sense a Gowdin moment about to happen.
GPs points are utterly incorrect, every modern OS for the last 7 or 8 years (possibly not Mac for a few years) has restricted content downloaded from the web to not "just run", and they all have mechanisms for declaring how files should run and whether they should run.
That's exactly what I saw happen in Windows the last time I watched someone use it: they downloaded a file from a website, and just ran it without any issue.
Here's a better question to ask: which official is going to wind up taking the fall for these wastes of tax dollars? So far, we know the following about these machines:
This was an obvious sweetheart deal, and someone is going to have to get in trouble for it. Obama or his successor will probably pardon that person, since it will just be a fall guy and nobody wants to start an investigation that would keep expanding until half of capitol hill was implicated.
The real failure of tablet computers was not as simple as "hurr durr they used a stylus." Desktop OSes are still designed for computers with keyboards; the mouse is only useful for launching programs and using files created by others. When it comes to writing an email, chatting, etc., the keyboard is still king; Steve Jobs was right on, and the truth of his statements has not changed. Modern tablets are winning because they run software that was designed to be far more graphical and "consumption oriented" -- a physical keyboard is not terribly important, and the software keyboard that is available is "good enough" for what people use their tablets for.
Clearly we are doomed, since we don't have any choice other than "democrats" or "republicans."
Except that the permissions on the file do matter. Processes are created using fork/exec, and you will not be able to call exec* on files that do not have execute permissions. This is not about your window manager or shell, it is about the permissions on files.
Wikileaks is dead, Openleaks is going nowhere, and traditional media outlets like the New York Times are not willing to publish certain things...so how do people publicize evidence of corruption? What are whistleblowers supposed to do, especially if the people they are blowing the whistle on are well connected and powerful?
I heard there was a leak, but when did Wikileaks go offline?
About 160 million years ago. Slashdot should be covering the story some time next week.
Yes, actually, it turns out that birds are considered to be a type of dinosaur.
The first non-bird species of reptile? I've heard that it is also the first non-mammal species of reptile to have its genome sequenced
As far as I know, the most up-to-date evidence suggests that the proper classification of birds is "dinosaurs," and therefore "reptiles."
Im simply firing back at someone who foolishly declared that NTFS's permissions were less "good" than ext3's, which is a load of rubbish if ive ever heard any.
It is not that they are "less good," it is that Windows (at least when I last saw someone using it) still assumes that if a file has ".exe" on the end of its name, it is an executable file, unless you configure different behavior. As far as I can tell, this is about convenience and the fact that users are so used to this behavior that they would not be willing to settle for something different. This is in contrast to most Unix-like OSes, where the filename is not relevant in determining whether or not the file can be executed, only the permissions are used.
Considering the way they attacked the journalists who picked up the new phone last time, I have trouble believing that they would actually try this strategy again -- who do they think is going to examine the phone this time? I understand that the corporate culture at Apple is "bend over and take it," but do they really think that the rest of the world is like that too?
The problem is that people are not generally aware of what a quantum computer would be useful for. Why should I care if there is a quantum computer sitting under my desk? How do I benefit from quantum algorithms?
There are indeed tangible benefits to quantum computing, beyond just attacking public key cryptosystems. As an example, quantum computers can speed up certain search algorithms, which is one of the promised commercial applications of a quantum computer.
Personally, I put quantum computers in the same technological category as fusion power. The world would be an exciting place if we had cold fusion, and we are just a few steps from having it...but those steps are measured in light years and involve practical and theoretical challenges that are hard to address. I have no doubt that some day, we will answer those questions and build fusion reactors and quantum computers, but I get the feeling that that day is pretty far off.
After all you can implement Lua and Prologue in C and then just compile that into your application and you're done.
Except that in Scheme, it is common to use a set of macros to implement another language's syntax within Scheme, so that you are just using the Scheme interpreter to interpret the other language. Prolog-in-Lisp is probably the most well known example of this sort of thing, although I have seen other things: Common-Lisp-in-Scheme, Scheme-in-Common-Lisp, Forth-in-Lisp, etc. In C, you wind up writing another interpreter; to get a mix of both C and the second language you are implementing, that interpreter would also have to understand C syntax (or do something like translate between languages).
If you're an extension language then there are certain things that should be the priority in the design: such as being smaller than the application it extends.
Which is why Scheme was chosen, rather than something like Common Lisp.
The reason Guile is a ugly
Who said Guile is ugly?
it's trying too hard to be a powerful programming language as its main goal and has no goal of being small and simple.
Guile implements Scheme; if you think Scheme is not simple enough, you must have never seen Common Lisp. Additionally, extension languages should be full-features programming languages in their own right; look at things like LaTeX or Emacs. The point of an extension language is to allow users to implement features that the original programmers had not envisioned, not just to write some simple command macros.
Remailers are still functional, although as far as I know they are mostly used for posting to Usenet. I am not sure if pseudonymous remailers are widely used these days, but mixmaster and cypherpunks remailers get a lot of traffic.
They didn't switch to Tcl because at the time, Tcl was not nearly powerful enough for what GNU wants their extension language to do. Tcl is an OK scripting language, but the GNU team wants an extension language that can reasonably be used to implement other languages (e.g. Prolog-in-Lisp), so that people are not limited to just your extension language (or to implementing an interpreter that runs in an interpreter; in lisp it is common to use macros and closures to enable the syntax of other languages to be used in a lisp program), and which makes it easy for an entire system to be built up using the extension language (e.g. Emacs). Lisp was not the other choice, and I would say that other systems have demonstrated that the core + large extensions codebase does not require everything that Guile promised (think of Matlab here), but to claim that Tcl was reject just because it was not written by GNU is just nonsense. The GNU team has implemented interpreters for numerous other languages that were rejected as the extension language.
Agencies like the NSA have the expertise, the money, and the infrastructure to own the majority of exit nodes.
I do not think anyone realistically believes that they can defeat the NSA. Yet there are numerous other government agencies in various countries around the world who do not have the capabilities that the NSA has, and who can do far greater harm than the NSA. Just because it would be difficult to defeat the world's most powerful and best funded signals intelligence agency does not mean that Tor or the anonymous remailer network are worthless.
Yes, I am sure that would go over real well:
Government: "What are you doing sending this encrypted data?!"
Citizen: "Encrypted?! That's just random bits that I was sending to my friend in America!"
Government: "Oh, never mind then. It's not like we have any reason to think that you would not be sending random bits to someone in America!"
How can one detect if a packet is encrypted? How do you distinguish unencrypted binary data from encrypted binary data?
Theoretically, you should not be able to distinguish encrypted bits from random data. Unfortunately, people almost never send megabytes of uniformly random bits to each other, and I doubt that the Pakistani courts are going to believe your claim that you were doing such a thing. You might claim that you were sending compressed data (which may also appear to be random), but then the courts are going to ask you how it was compressed, so that they can decompress it -- and when you tell them "LZMA" and they get random bits, they are going to throw you in prison.
VPN's and encrypted connections are mostly used for criminal purposes
Both my current and former employers would disagree with you.
If you aren't doing anything bad, why couldn't the government know about it?
So that it is harder for the government to do something bad.
Amid all these internet-blocking stories I still haven't found an answer to how dictators prevent satellite internet connections
You there! What are you doing with that dish? You're under arrest!
The problem with using unusual equipment to get onto the Internet is that it is unusual, which makes you stand out.
M-x license-fee-mode
That is why I said "sic" -- "beastiality" is what is on the list.