Could be, but I'm suspicious it's a good old trench code, or telegraphers' code. It's not hard to generate a trench code that has arbitrary vocabulary sizes, with any desired code group or group substring distributions.
Not impossible, but generally infeasible. Especially if you have this amount of traffic, and especially with the introduction of some number of "noise" words.
Very likely you can't easily crack the code. reason: it's a true code, not a cipher. A real code assigns a symbol like '34187' to a word or phrase arbitrarily. Unlike ciphers, true codes are very difficult to crack without getting the key somehow, because there is very little redundancy to exploit statistically.
Okay, folks, tell me: what can a cyber-terrorist do to a car that will cause it to burst into flames in a few weeks? All I can think of offhand is changing the spec for the gas line to gum rubber instead of neopreme, or soemthing like that --- and, of course, no one involved will ever notice, because cars are completely assembled by robots and no human ever sees the specs, buys the materials, or checks the figures.
And, if they were to do so, what happens? Someone announces a recall and a bunch of people take their cars to the dealerships.
Hell, why not do it the cheap way: wait until there is an accident, and just announce that it was done by your super secret ninja terror 31ee7 hax0rs.
Or consider the sources: this guy from the "U.S. Cyber Consequences Unit" --- with their empty website on a non-government '.us' domain.
Remember, kids, only a few years ago, the world didn't need computers to run. Chemical plants and other control systems have failsafes and safety valves and emergency shutdowns; people survive power blackouts, even if the birth rate does go up; we still have analog radios and mechanical water valves.
On the other hand --- here's some guy with a nifty-sounding name on a web-site, and Richard Clarke, who has been making a living from running around with his hair on fire ever since he said cyber-terror was a bigger threat than al Qaeda. Get a little attention, and people will start taking their calls again; maybe the USCCA" can even hire someone to make a web site.
In the immortal words of my metaphorical ancestor Tonto, "what you mean 'us', white man?"
But there are a couple things there: first, vitamin D (cholecalciferol) is fat-soluable, so even supplemented skim milk isn't a very effective way of absorbing vitamin D. Second, if you're going to make a point of RTFA, you might read down and note the article calls out sunscreen too.
That's Vitamin D deficiency. That's not an infectious disease --- that's people having a panic about suntans and fat in the diets. Let kids have regular whole milk (which is Vitamin D enriched) and play in the sun without dipping them in sunscreen and it'll go away.
You know what? I grew up in a music store, and played at most all instruments. Fifty grand won't help --- even fifty grand a year won't help. There are only so many people with the "lip".
We're burying a couple thousand WWII vets a month now....
The fact is that the offshoring fad is fading as people find out that it's not the cost per line that matters if you aren't getting the code you need. I'm engaged in helping save a project that went down that path too far; we got lots of code, it didn't do what was needed. We now hope to recover some value, but all development has moved back to the US, where we can interact with the customers in real time.
Journalism is certainly an option, although computer journalism is often geekier than you might imagine. Technical writing, human-interface design (had any psych classes?), marketing or pre-sales technical support can be fun.
Don't, however, give up on a technical path. People with technical backgrounds who can also write a sentence in whih noun and verb agree in number, and paragraphs witha topic sentence, and all that nasty English Comp stuff, are rare. If you like public speaking as well, you're really rare. And valuable.
(I tell my undergrads this all the time, usually when they're complaining that I make them write comments grammatically. They never believe me until they go get jobs.)
The point is not that calculus per se is important, but there's such a thing as "mathematical sophistication", the ability to think like a mathematician. He's sayng that you need that degree of logical thinking, not L'Hopital's Rule.
Of course, you could be like me, a total math geek but didn't know it in Calc I --- didn't show up until I got past the calculation stuff and did real math.
Visitors are reminded that the use of weapons, teleportation, and religion are forbiddin on the platform.
(Does this make me the first to use a new Dr Who quote on Slashdot?)
Re:Learn to type ... and/or take piano lessons
on
Preventing RSI?
·
· Score: 1
Yup, that too --- although the relaxed-wrist hands-dropped posture isn't unknown to pianists either, on the theory that they use the weight of their arms for fortissimo.
... seriously. Back in the old days, when I was a kid, we learned to type on manual typewriters, which meant that we had to hold our wrists up high and press straight down with our fingers to get enough force to make a good clean mark. Most people on computers type with their wrists on the table, or on a wrist rest, which means the wrist is extended back and the tendons that run through the carpal tunnel (ie, the space between the carpal bones of the wrist and hand) are pressed against the fibrous sheath --- leading to inflammation, swelling, and a vicious circle to RSI and pain. Develop the habit of keeping your wrists up so they stay striaght, and adjust the keyboard height so your shoulders can be relaxed at the same time.
... no, the manual typewriters didn't have a bird that chiseled the letters into stone tablets.
I've got about as many computers as anyone normally does --- I admit there's a guy who works for me who has 20-odd Sun servers at home, but that's certainly an outlier --- and I tend, increasingly, to do the daily basic stuff on web applications: Basecamp, spongecell, gmail, a web-enabled exchange email (ick), Writely, celtx, iJot....
I program on my local box, I do heavy graphics on my local box, but those are't the usual day to day applications.
Using web apps means my data is accessible from nearly anywhere. If I'm really concerned about privacy, I keep it on a thumb drive, but there's darn little that I worry about.
I'm not sure why an ordinary civilian user needs a desktop.
I've done quite a lot of this over the years, and I can see how you'd find it scary. here's the key things:
* get a good tight NDA from the auditors * get a well-respected firm to do it, one that has something to lose. Someone like Ernst-Young. * insist on it being done on your site, and that you receive all work products at the end of the audit. This won't keep someone from walking off with a copy of the code anyway (not when you can buy a 2 gig USB key for a hundred bucks) but will strengthen your case if anything does get pirated. * Look for a firm that doesn't have a software business in your area of expertise. You don't need to be buildign bank apps to audit the code; if you pick someone who doesn't have bank apps in their product line, and they suddenly start some after the audit, you'll have a good hint that there's a balrog in the woodpile.
Slashdot Mirror
Could be, but I'm suspicious it's a good old trench code, or telegraphers' code. It's not hard to generate a trench code that has arbitrary vocabulary sizes, with any desired code group or group substring distributions.
Reading about cryptographic codes wouldn't hurt either.
Not impossible, but generally infeasible. Especially if you have this amount of traffic, and especially with the introduction of some number of "noise" words.
Right, and that's why it's Richard Clarke being quoted and the Independent running the story.
Idjit.
Look up "covert channel", there's a good boy.
Very likely you can't easily crack the code. reason: it's a true code, not a cipher. A real code assigns a symbol like '34187' to a word or phrase arbitrarily. Unlike ciphers, true codes are very difficult to crack without getting the key somehow, because there is very little redundancy to exploit statistically.
I don't think it counts as a covert channel if you're doing it in clear text on a site like slashdot.
Power, money, Jesus, hot and cold running hookers.
Sounds like quite a party.
Okay, folks, tell me: what can a cyber-terrorist do to a car that will cause it to burst into flames in a few weeks? All I can think of offhand is changing the spec for the gas line to gum rubber instead of neopreme, or soemthing like that --- and, of course, no one involved will ever notice, because cars are completely assembled by robots and no human ever sees the specs, buys the materials, or checks the figures.
And, if they were to do so, what happens? Someone announces a recall and a bunch of people take their cars to the dealerships.
Hell, why not do it the cheap way: wait until there is an accident, and just announce that it was done by your super secret ninja terror 31ee7 hax0rs.
Or consider the sources: this guy from the "U.S. Cyber Consequences Unit" --- with their empty website on a non-government '.us' domain.
Remember, kids, only a few years ago, the world didn't need computers to run. Chemical plants and other control systems have failsafes and safety valves and emergency shutdowns; people survive power blackouts, even if the birth rate does go up; we still have analog radios and mechanical water valves.
On the other hand --- here's some guy with a nifty-sounding name on a web-site, and Richard Clarke, who has been making a living from running around with his hair on fire ever since he said cyber-terror was a bigger threat than al Qaeda. Get a little attention, and people will start taking their calls again; maybe the USCCA" can even hire someone to make a web site.
Who benefits from this story?
In the immortal words of my metaphorical ancestor Tonto, "what you mean 'us', white man?"
But there are a couple things there: first, vitamin D (cholecalciferol) is fat-soluable, so even supplemented skim milk isn't a very effective way of absorbing vitamin D. Second, if you're going to make a point of RTFA, you might read down and note the article calls out sunscreen too.
... and thanks for all the other funerals, too. Got to be a bunch of green karma stamps in that.
Rickets??
That's Vitamin D deficiency. That's not an infectious disease --- that's people having a panic about suntans and fat in the diets. Let kids have regular whole milk (which is Vitamin D enriched) and play in the sun without dipping them in sunscreen and it'll go away.
You know what? I grew up in a music store, and played at most all instruments. Fifty grand won't help --- even fifty grand a year won't help. There are only so many people with the "lip".
We're burying a couple thousand WWII vets a month now....
The fact is that the offshoring fad is fading as people find out that it's not the cost per line that matters if you aren't getting the code you need. I'm engaged in helping save a project that went down that path too far; we got lots of code, it didn't do what was needed. We now hope to recover some value, but all development has moved back to the US, where we can interact with the customers in real time.
Journalism is certainly an option, although computer journalism is often geekier than you might imagine. Technical writing, human-interface design (had any psych classes?), marketing or pre-sales technical support can be fun.
Don't, however, give up on a technical path. People with technical backgrounds who can also write a sentence in whih noun and verb agree in number, and paragraphs witha topic sentence, and all that nasty English Comp stuff, are rare. If you like public speaking as well, you're really rare. And valuable.
(I tell my undergrads this all the time, usually when they're complaining that I make them write comments grammatically. They never believe me until they go get jobs.)
The point is not that calculus per se is important, but there's such a thing as "mathematical sophistication", the ability to think like a mathematician. He's sayng that you need that degree of logical thinking, not L'Hopital's Rule.
Of course, you could be like me, a total math geek but didn't know it in Calc I --- didn't show up until I got past the calculation stuff and did real math.
Okay, now it's REALLY sounding like Heim theory.
Visitors are reminded that the use of weapons, teleportation, and religion are forbiddin on the platform.
(Does this make me the first to use a new Dr Who quote on Slashdot?)
Yup, that too --- although the relaxed-wrist hands-dropped posture isn't unknown to pianists either, on the theory that they use the weight of their arms for fortissimo.
So nuclear power is only good for a small improvement. but then, so were the Kyoto protocols.
I've got about as many computers as anyone normally does --- I admit there's a guy who works for me who has 20-odd Sun servers at home, but that's certainly an outlier --- and I tend, increasingly, to do the daily basic stuff on web applications: Basecamp, spongecell, gmail, a web-enabled exchange email (ick), Writely, celtx, iJot ....
I program on my local box, I do heavy graphics on my local box, but those are't the usual day to day applications.
Using web apps means my data is accessible from nearly anywhere. If I'm really concerned about privacy, I keep it on a thumb drive, but there's darn little that I worry about.
I'm not sure why an ordinary civilian user needs a desktop.
that's more of a tanka.
I've done quite a lot of this over the years, and I can see how you'd find it scary. here's the key things:
* get a good tight NDA from the auditors
* get a well-respected firm to do it, one that has something to lose. Someone like Ernst-Young.
* insist on it being done on your site, and that you receive all work products at the end of the audit. This won't keep someone from walking off with a copy of the code anyway (not when you can buy a 2 gig USB key for a hundred bucks) but will strengthen your case if anything does get pirated.
* Look for a firm that doesn't have a software business in your area of expertise. You don't need to be buildign bank apps to audit the code; if you pick someone who doesn't have bank apps in their product line, and they suddenly start some after the audit, you'll have a good hint that there's a balrog in the woodpile.
Yup. That's why we all light our houses with stinky tallow candles, now that whale oil is so expensive.