Recent Posts

476

Developer's Corner / Re: The Inversion of the Open Source - Big Corporation Divide?

« Last post by Eóin on July 29, 2010, 07:42 AM »

This is just the nature of opensource to my mind, and it the very reason I never understood the GPL. I just don't get the logic behind "Go ahead use my software for building monopolies or managing your dictatorship, but if you link my library against your freeware app I'll come down on you like a tonne of bricks".

You need money to make money, it's always been that way. What we'll see is the further growth of middle men, people who run 'farms or rent' on which you can host your web applications, that way indie developers can get a foot in the door.

477

Living Room / Re: New Government Rules make Jailbreaking Legal

« Last post by Eóin on July 27, 2010, 05:17 PM »

It applies to all 'wireless telephone handsets'. Apple are just the ones getting the bad press

478

Developer's Corner / Re: The Hacking Business Model -- not just about the code

« Last post by Eóin on July 22, 2010, 11:27 AM »

rxantos, in that voting model a large group of people working together would get huge voting power without necessarily having invested much money. Any competitor who could simply organize a bunch of people could gain control for little expense.

479

Living Room / Re: Which came first? The Chicken or the Egg? Scientists say: The Chicken

« Last post by Eóin on July 15, 2010, 03:04 AM »

I would suggest it depends on if you define a chicken egg as something which is laid by a chicken, or as something from which a chicken hatches. Once you settle on the definition then the answer to the question is simple.

Anyway, here's a rather critical follow-up; Chickens, eggs, this is no way to report on science.

480

Living Room / Re: Should Apple recall the iPhone4? Or should the user "Hold the phone the right"?

« Last post by Eóin on July 14, 2010, 11:23 AM »

Stoic Joker: you should just this suit 

481

Living Room / Re: Should Apple recall the iPhone4? Or should the user "Hold the phone the right"?

« Last post by Eóin on July 14, 2010, 07:29 AM »

True, but they weren't designed and built by God himself.

482

Living Room / Re: App Culture vs. Free Culture

« Last post by Eóin on July 09, 2010, 11:29 AM »

I don't really see any problems with App Stores as yet another source of software.

If they were exclusive sources then yes, that'd be a big issue but that will never happen on the PC or the Mac. I'd even go so far as to suggest it will un-happen on the iPhone/Pad soon enough when the trade regulators in EU and possibly US do proper investigations.

483

Post New Requests Here / Re: Incompatiable License

« Last post by Eóin on July 06, 2010, 12:57 PM »

rant: I generally consider incompatibility with GPL to be GPL's fault

484

Living Room / Re: Please recommend beautiful websites with simple, elegant designs.

« Last post by Eóin on July 02, 2010, 06:19 PM »

You should browse through some wordpress themes. Even if what you want is nothing to do with wordpress or blogging they are still an excellent source of inspiration.

485

Living Room / Re: Apple/ATT sued over iPhone 4 Antenna issues

« Last post by Eóin on July 02, 2010, 09:00 AM »

The only reason I find this funny is because buying such an expensive piece of kit on per-order without having heard a single review seems crazy to me.

486

General Software Discussion / Re: Truecrypt defeats FBI

« Last post by Eóin on June 29, 2010, 12:23 PM »

CWuestefeld - I think there is a stage input from one block to the next, so a corrupted byte in one block would probably also corrupt the blocks that follow it. At least that's the SSL approach I believe. Truecrypt supports random access so probably does thing differently.

mwb1100 - The salt isn't added to the password, otherwise the same password would have numerous key associated with it and you couldn't decrypt anything. The salt is added to the data to be encrypted. That way the same key and same data look different after encryption. When you decrypt the cipher you simply ignore the salt bits.

I should stress I don't really know what I'm talking about here, just recounting what little bits of info I've collected over the years.

487

General Software Discussion / Re: Truecrypt defeats FBI

« Last post by Eóin on June 29, 2010, 10:19 AM »

I'd heard of that before. If it works then it's quite cool. But I wonder of tolerant or intolerant it really is? I also wonder how well it'd work in the real world. Wouldn't different keyboard affect your typing profile? How about if you're sluggish from a flu or hangover? Can you still access you're account then?

488

General Software Discussion / Re: Truecrypt defeats FBI

« Last post by Eóin on June 29, 2010, 08:11 AM »

In order to decrypt the file, you'd also need to use the same app that generated the complex password. So having the file and knowing what the encryption algorithm and user password was wouldn't help you decode it unless you knew the internally used password - or knew how to generate it.

-40hz (June 29, 2010, 01:17 AM)

My question would be, how likely is it that someone would know how to generate your password? A good security system is one that can stand up to an attack even if every detail of it's implementation is known by the attacker.

489

General Software Discussion / Re: Truecrypt defeats FBI

« Last post by Eóin on June 28, 2010, 03:55 PM »

I didn't know about that 'purposely corrupting some bytes' trick. But wouldn't you be better off putting that effort into remembering an even stronger password? Seems to me like changing some bytes is like an extension to the password.

Also a question about the effect on the data? I know RSA and probably those like it would succumb to any changed bytes, but wouldn't the like of AES decrypt up to the corrupted portion more or less correctly? Thinking about it, if there is more than one pass over the data then no you probably wouldn't be able to recover anything.

Also - Bruce Schneier says meh to one-time pads

• Bruce found a secure way to reuse a one-time pad.
• Bruce Schneier can crack a one-time pad before it's used.
• At college, Bruce Schneier had his way with so many women that his dorm room was called "The One-Time Pad.".

-http://www.schneierfacts.com/

490

General Software Discussion / Re: Truecrypt defeats FBI

« Last post by Eóin on June 28, 2010, 10:48 AM »

Well it says an 'unnamed algorithm' rather than another program. Truecrypt offers a number alternative encryption algorithms as well as cascaded combinations.

Obviously one can't be sure but I'd sooner guess that it was simply one of those, after all rolling your own crypto algorithm is never a good idea.

491

General Software Discussion / Truecrypt defeats FBI

« Last post by Eóin on June 28, 2010, 09:14 AM »

Here's an interesting article I've read over at The Register about a Brazilian banker.

Putting particular case aside, I don't actually take much joy in seeing a crooked financial businessman getting away with crime. What interests me is how much this speaks for the credibility of Truecrypt. For starters it pretty much cements the fact that there is no backdoor in the program. Now admittedly being opensource such a door would be hard to find but nonetheless this is most reassuring.

It's also a testament to the quality and robustness of the cryptography within Truecrypt as often when security like this is compromised it's down to bad implementation and not weaknesses in the algorithms

492

Post New Requests Here / Re: Idea: type into an application that is not at the top

« Last post by Eóin on June 28, 2010, 09:01 AM »

I'd guess perhaps that setting the large window to always on top would achieve the same effect, and such a solution I'm sure is already out there.

Just a thought.

493

General Software Discussion / Re: A [probable] RTFM conundrum ...

« Last post by Eóin on June 24, 2010, 07:07 PM »

Can you verify that mod_php is indeed loaded and running in Apache? Been years since I did this but I'm sure I remember there was some sanity test of sorts you could perform to make sure Apache and mod_php were fine before you'd then move on to configuring a site.

494

Living Room / Re: The internet: Everything you ever need to know

« Last post by Eóin on June 24, 2010, 04:09 PM »

Of course, another image of "radically increased biodiversity" overcoming a "slow-moving" status quo is that of a town being swallowed by a jungle. There was violence and unfairness in the town, but it was at least to some extent constrained. In the jungle, "fair" isn't even an aspiration; it's just nature red in tooth and claw. Why this is something we should be enthusiastic about is a little hard to see.

I think this is a good piece overall. But I think it's worth noting that the role of most of us in "an ecosystem whose biodiversity has expanded rapidly" isn't "fun bohemian," it's "lunch."

Aaaargh metaphor fail! Maybe it's just me but I can't see how the extension of the metaphor parallels with what it originally described. You can't just extent the logic of a metaphor and assume it still applies to the original topic. I think misuse and understanding of metaphors and anaoligies is rapidly becoming my new pet hate


Anyway that aside, it really is an excellent article, I particularly like the last paragraph of point #1. We see that fear of the unknown everyday in the decisions and actions of people failing to keep up with the changes.

495

Living Room / Re: A software engineer might tell you that the fastest code is...

« Last post by Eóin on June 23, 2010, 08:56 AM »

Ok, I was being a bit harsh maybe the analogy works in that sense, but I don't believe it's a 'useful' analogy.

Let's look at it this way, when are large, interconnected computer systems simple? I would suggest, as a hypothesis, that happens when all the parts play by the rules. Then you really can get this wonderful complexity of function from simplicity in the design.

But things get very complicated when you have to account for the edge cases, trying for example to recover from umpteen different errors all of which might require a different tactic. Then how about malicious attacks, inputs specially crafted to crash or subvert the systems? Trying to foresee those is beyond the capabilities of many programmers. Add to that backwards compatibility and well... by now elegance is taking a backseat.

Now what happens in political bills? Well keeping to the analogy we have whats described above. Existing legislation and near endless corner cases must be accounted for. Then any and all loopholes need to be closed because you're going to have thousands if not millions of people actively looking for some way to exploit the systems to their ends. It's no wonder these political bills run to thousands to pages.

But nonetheless maybe I was being a bit glib, I just really was hoping for an interesting programming related discussion.

496

Living Room / Re: A software engineer might tell you that the fastest code is...

« Last post by Eóin on June 23, 2010, 06:42 AM »

And there I thought this might be a discussion on software design rather than using it as a bad analogy for politics...  

497

General Software Discussion / Re: The Odds Are Increasing That Microsoft's Business Will Collapse

« Last post by Eóin on June 22, 2010, 09:37 AM »

Apple's iPad seems on its way to supplanting the low-end PC business.

-urlwolf (June 22, 2010, 08:05 AM)

Ha, what utter nonsense. I'd even be dubious it will replace netbooks given the lack of a keyboard.

In fact, it's not hard to envision a future in which the "desktop PC," as Microsoft currently defines it, becomes an oddity--a strange throwback to a world in which a single local hard drive (or a box of floppy disks) constituted the center of someone's work life.

-http://www.businessinsider.com/microsofts-business-could-collapse-2010-6

Personally I find that very very hard to imagine. Most of the article reads as one dubious hypothesis after another. And when someone words their personal notions and theories as fact they lose all credibility in my eyes.

498

Living Room / Re: 40+ Free Professional Fonts from Smashing Magazine

« Last post by Eóin on June 21, 2010, 04:33 PM »

Not related to Smashing Magazine, but definitly related to free fonts, here's a link I came across recently:

6700 Free And Redistributable Fonts For Linux (All TTFs so actually for Windows and others too).

499

Living Room / Re: South African doctor invents female condom with 'teeth' to fight rape.

« Last post by Eóin on June 21, 2010, 03:07 PM »

Interesting that this story seems to have cropped up all over the interwebs today, the device itself was developed 5 years ago and I remember seeing it mentioned in an Encyclopedia Dramatica article at least 3 years ago.

500

Living Room / Re: IP address on public network

« Last post by Eóin on June 20, 2010, 02:48 PM »

Technical skills? Sounds more like 1337 haxxor skillz to me!