Linux-Advocacy Digest #301, Volume #34 Mon, 7 May 01 16:13:05 EDT
Contents:
Re: Windows makes good coasters (Fred K Ollinger)
Re: The long slow slide to Microsoft.NOT ("Ayende Rahien")
Re: Justice Department LOVES Microsoft! ("Ayende Rahien")
Re: where's the linux performance? (pip)
Re: Just how commercially viable is OSS?... (Was Re: Interesting MS speech on
OSS/GPL ( /. hates it so it's good)) (Rob S. Wolfram)
Re: Why is Microsoft opening more Windows source code? (Rob S. Wolfram)
Re: Why is Microsoft opening more Windows source code? (Rob S. Wolfram)
Re: Windos is *unfriendly* (Rob S. Wolfram)
Re: How to hack with a crash, another Microsoft "feature" (Chad Everett)
Re: How to hack with a crash, another Microsoft "feature" (Chad Everett)
Re: Apple is doing a good thing (Chad Everett)
Re: Justice Department LOVES Microsoft! (GreyCloud)
Re: bank switches from using NT 4 ("Ayende Rahien")
Re: Microsoft standards... (was Re: Windows 2000 - It is a crappy product) ("Ayende
Rahien")
Re: Linux and MP3s (.)
Re: Just how commercially viable is OSS?... (Was Re: Interesting MS speech on
OSS/GPL ( /. hates it so it's good)) ("Edward Rosten")
Re: How to hack with a crash, another Microsoft "feature" ("Erik Funkenbusch")
Re: Microsoft standards... (was Re: Windows 2000 - It is a crappy product) ("Edward
Rosten")
Re: Why is Microsoft opening more Windows source code? ("Erik Funkenbusch")
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Fred K Ollinger)
Subject: Re: Windows makes good coasters
Date: 7 May 2001 19:19:11 GMT
Nik Simpson ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote:
: "Peter K�hlmann" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
: news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
: > Jan Johanson wrote:
: >
: > > Really people - at least learn how to setup and use an OS before
: > > attempting to disparage it.
: > >
: >
: > Jan at his best, dumb and without any clue whatsoever.
: > Did you ever think that the overwhelmng majority of these linux-users did
: > use windows before they switched or are still using it today in addition
: > to linux?
: >
: > There your whole argument falls apart. But that was clear from the
: > beginning - you are simply a wintroll (saying by itself that you�re about
: > as dumb as a pile of horseshit)
: But that still doesn't address the fact that many of using Windows (W2K in
: my case) don't see problems with CD burning. Something, which if you beleive
: the LINUX trolls, is endemic to the platform. I've had my CD burner for
: about a year now on a 350MHz PII running W2K and have yet to make a
: "coaster", so the question is to some degree valid, why are these people
I've made coasters w/ both oses. I'm not a nut. Many people here only use
win and have also made coasters. Are you suggesting that anyone who has
trouble w/ windows is an idiot? As someone who uses daily an os that
win people say is 'hard to use' w/ ease, I"m not stupid, and yet I do have
trouble in win. So you are wrong. Question should be, how to make win
or lin or any os more stable so taht we don't have so much trouble.
Typically this means pay and/or wait if you run win. the other question is
if win is so 'easy to use' why so many coasters made by windows only people?
I have seen coasters w/ my own eyes. Shouldn't windows protect users from
themselves? I suggest that the ease of use is over-rated.
You are either lucky or lying in your own situation.
Fred
------------------------------
From: "Ayende Rahien" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy,alt.linux,alt.destroy.microsoft
Subject: Re: The long slow slide to Microsoft.NOT
Date: Mon, 7 May 2001 22:04:43 +0200
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:9d6j13$8uf$[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> 'C' programmers would still love to be able to do this, and often have to
> reinvent it one way or another. This would help prevent such problems
> as buffer overflows, which is probably the most common form of bugs in
> a 'C' program. Probably what pisses them off is the fact that most
compilers
> do it in a very superficial way. It complains about every sinlge
infraction
> without any intelligence, or any attempt to differentiate between the
> intent of the programmer and an oversight. This combined with the fact
that
> they are a hell of a lot more ways a program can go wrong than buffer
> overflows, make it more hassle then its worth.
Buffer overflows can be quite easily prevented with a bound chechking.
Try to offer *that* to a C programmer, and see how violently he will object.
As for stupid compilers, how *could* it tell from a progammer's oversight or
a really neat trick?
------------------------------
From: "Ayende Rahien" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To:
comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy,comp.sys.mac.advocacy,comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy
Subject: Re: Justice Department LOVES Microsoft!
Date: Mon, 7 May 2001 22:13:46 +0200
"Daniel Johnson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:IeAJ6.8652$[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> Shall I go on? I have a lot of stuff to belyache
> about. :D
This is certainly intersting, do go on.
------------------------------
From: pip <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: where's the linux performance?
Date: Mon, 07 May 2001 20:25:22 +0100
Jonathan Martindell wrote:
>
> You have drawn the wrong conclusions about me and my motives. I'm sorry if
> I was ambiguous in my message. I'm not familiar with newsgroups. I
> appreciate all the help and suggestions offered. Thank you.
Well, I am glad to see that you may not be a troll! Sorry if you are not
for the accusation. One tip is that posting to any .advocacy newsgroup
is not the best place to obtain help. As a Java programmer for example
you should post your programming problems to comp.lang.java.programmer
where we will be willing to help, but NEVER to comp.lang.java.advocacy
as it's a waste of space.
As the other posters have pointed out there are quite a few performance
tricks to make Linux purr. As a programmer Linux is a joy to explore. If
you want to learn C/C++ and GUI toolkits then it's all free and
wonderful user-support! So, invest time in getting to know Linux and try
not to judge that it is no good because a single application takes a few
seconds more to open than you are used to. Linux is a great platform for
the programmer and well supported for Java. You should try JBuilder as
well as Forte. The thing that you will notice is that programming is
much better in Linux simply because the system is more stable. I
programmed for a few years under NT, and while it was quite good and
useable - it still was not as reliable as my Linux box. Also there are
so many more toys for the programmer in Linux that it really is the only
choice for computer scientists.
May your travels in Linux be good
p.s. People in ng's like follow-up's just to see if the advice given is
useful, and I'm glad to see that you have.
> -Jonathan
>
> "pip" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
> news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> > "~�~" wrote:
> > >
> > > Manage this.
> >
> > How interesting: the OP did not reply once even to the polite
> > suggestions. Go figure.
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Rob S. Wolfram)
Crossposted-To:
comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy,comp.unix.advocacy,comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy
Subject: Re: Just how commercially viable is OSS?... (Was Re: Interesting MS speech
on OSS/GPL ( /. hates it so it's good))
Date: 7 May 2001 15:52:11 GMT
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Chad Myers <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>"Steve Sheldon" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
>news:9d41da$tcm$[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
>> Is this the name of Ellison's new Yacht?
>No, no, no... everyone knows the name of his new Yacht is:
>"I HAVE A BIGGER PENIS THAN BILL GATES"
Hey, that's easy. Where do you think the name "Micro-Soft" originates?
;-)
(sorry, couldn't resist...)
Cheers,
Rob
--
Rob S. Wolfram <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> OpenPGP key 0xD61A655D
"I imagine that playing with one's genital piercings
while waiting for a client's disk to fsck or something
would probably not be appropriate." -- 'Skud' in a.s.r.
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Rob S. Wolfram)
Subject: Re: Why is Microsoft opening more Windows source code?
Date: 7 May 2001 15:58:33 GMT
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Erik Funkenbusch <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>"jtnews" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
>news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
>> If open source is so bad, according to Microsoft,
>> why are they suddenly changing their tune now?
>Open Source isn't bad, according to MS. The GPL is. They support Open
>Source licenses such as the BSDL.
Do they? What software have they BSDLed?
Cheers,
Rob
--
Rob S. Wolfram <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> OpenPGP key 0xD61A655D
The best way to accelerate a computer running Windows is at
0.0713 furlongs per square microfortnight
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Rob S. Wolfram)
Subject: Re: Why is Microsoft opening more Windows source code?
Date: 7 May 2001 16:27:28 GMT
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Erik Funkenbusch <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>Well, they're not the same really, and I understand that Stallman wants to
>differentiate them. My beef is the use of the term "free", and it always
>has been. They could have chosen lots of different terms, but then that
>would be unambiguous, and would be a detriment to the GPL being snuck in the
>back door of companies without their knowledge until it was too late.
Personally I agree with the term "free" for GPLed software and all other
software that has a license that conforms to the Debian Free Software
Guidelines (BSDL, MPL etc). My beef is primarily against the ambiguity
concerning derivativeness in the GPL, but I dislike the extreme lack of
control that the BSDL and MIT licenses suffer from.
[snip]
>No. As an example, I was talking to the author of an open source c++ class
>framework on Source Forge, he had the framework listed as having the GPL
>license. I asked him about this, and mentioned that this would mean that
>the framework could only be used in other GPL projects (by anyone other than
>himself), and not non-GPL'd projects. He was surprised and had no idea.
Which is really his bad. He should have RTFL. BTW, how did he react when
you told him that relicensing it to the BDSL (if still possible) would
enable someone to extend and redistribute his code without releasing the
enhancements?
Cheers,
Rob
--
Rob S. Wolfram <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> OpenPGP key 0xD61A655D
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity,
and I'm not sure about the former."
-- Albert Einstein
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Rob S. Wolfram)
Subject: Re: Windos is *unfriendly*
Date: 7 May 2001 19:21:51 GMT
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
GreyCloud <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> I probably will end up
>using Suse 7.1 only if it now has the drivers to the lucent winmodems.
This message came to you via a Lucent linmodem ;-)
So maybe you will not find the ltmodem module in vanilla SuSE, but via
www.linmodems.org you can find a tarball with pretty verbose
descriptions of how to build the module for your kernel.
HTH,
Rob
--
Rob S. Wolfram <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> OpenPGP key 0xD61A655D
The use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should, therefore,
be regarded as a criminal offence.
-- E.W. Dijkstra, SIGPLAN Notices, Volume 17, Number 5
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Chad Everett)
Subject: Re: How to hack with a crash, another Microsoft "feature"
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: 7 May 2001 13:59:43 -0500
On Mon, 07 May 2001 14:27:19 -0400, Aaron R. Kulkis <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>Chad Everett wrote:
>>
>> On Mon, 07 May 2001 17:15:13 GMT, T. Max Devlin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> >Said Erik Funkenbusch in comp.os.linux.advocacy on Sun, 6 May 2001
>> > [...]
>> >>I said a "rosetta stone" *OR* some way to identify at least one character or
>> >>word in the data.
>> >
>> >Statistically trivial.
>> >
>> > [...]
>> >>You're assuming that someone just ran a file through zip. That's not what
>> >>i'm talking about. There are many compression algorithms that you can apply
>> >>without creating file information. The output of the algorithm should
>> >>appear random if you don't know that it is compressed data.
>> >
>> >No assumptions. Regardless of what mangling you try to do to obfuscate
>> >the data, the data is trivially vulnerable without strong encryption.
>> >
>> > [...]
>> >>No, a 4 bit key simply means that the key is 4 bits. The key may not use
>> >>factors at all, it might be the value that is XOR'd for example, or any of a
>> >>billion other ways those 4 bits might be used to encode the data. You're
>> >>making the critical error of assuming the use of a known algorithm, which is
>> >>exactly my point.
>> >
>> >You misunderstand the analytical meaning of the term 'key', which
>> >suggests prime factor-based strong encryption. Your "algorithmic
>> >obfuscation" simply isn't real security, Erik. Get it?
>> >
>>
>> Erik is making a classic mistake. His translation table AND the 4 bit
>> index is "the key".
>>
>> You can never have a secure system if you base security on the secrecy of
>> the algorithm.
>>
>> From "Applied Cryptography", Bruce Schneier: "All of the security [in these
>> algorithms] is based in the key (or keys); none is based in the details
>> of the algorithm. This means that the algorithm can be published and
>> analyzed. Products using the algorithm can be mass-produced. It doesn't
>> matter if an eavesdropper knows your algorithm, if she doesn't know your
>> particular key, she can't read your messages".
>>
>> >>> Enigma was originally cracked without any knowledge of the algorithm,
>> >>> and it had a key length of 26^7 IIRC.
>>
>> False. The crackers knew it was rotor machine, had information on its
>> construction and operation, etc, etc.
>
>They even had a complete model smuggled out of Poland.
>
Except, amazingly, it was a duplicate that the Polish had built straight from
their mathematical deductions, experimentation, and the knowledge they
had about the "real" enigma machines.
>
>>
>> >>
>> >>If that were the case, they wouldn't have needed to capture the enigma
>> >>machines.
>>
>> They didn't need to capture enigma machines. Your history is a little off
>> here.
>>
>> The Polish, and later the French and British cracked most of the enigma
>> without ever having captured a single enigma machine. They actually
>> built duplicates based on their amazing work in cryptography and mathematics.
>> See http://insci14.ucsd.edu/~ma187s/students/enigma.html
>>
>
>The best source is "The Code Breakers" by David Kahn.
>
Probably, I was going for something easily accessible via http.
>
>> >
>> >At the time, they did. That's WHY they had to capture the enigma
>> >machine. They didn't have 386's with megs of RAM, remember?
>> >
>>
>> Again, you're incorrect here. They didn't need to capture the enigma. They
>> cracked enigma without ever capturing a single enigma machine.
>
>
>--
>Aaron R. Kulkis
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Chad Everett)
Subject: Re: How to hack with a crash, another Microsoft "feature"
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: 7 May 2001 14:01:19 -0500
On Mon, 7 May 2001 13:56:28 -0500, Erik Funkenbusch <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>"Chad Everett" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
>news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
>> On Mon, 7 May 2001 05:11:24 -0500, Erik Funkenbusch <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>wrote:
>> >
>> >You're forgetting. I already offered that it would be quite possible to
>> >device an encoding scheme where the same sequence of characters are not
>> >encoded the same way twice. Thus, all your occurances of A and O would
>be
>> >different for each time they occured. Suppose I used the 4 bit key as an
>> >index into a completely arbitrarily chosen letter translation table.
>>
>> How do you distribute the translation table?
>
>You don't need to. Both sides have the table. We're not talking about PKI
>here, we're talking about two sides (say the Pentagon and some foreign
>embassy). You can have totally unique algorithms for each embassy, so that
>should one become compromised, your other embassies aren't. It's only
>purpose is encryption between point a and point b, never point c, d, or e,
>etc...
>
If that's the case then the translation table AND your 4-bit index are
"the key" and you're not really talking about a 4-bit key anymore.
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Chad Everett)
Subject: Re: Apple is doing a good thing
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: 7 May 2001 14:03:18 -0500
On Mon, 7 May 2001 04:28:57 -0500, Erik Funkenbusch <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>"GreyCloud" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
>news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
>> Erik Funkenbusch wrote:
>> >
>> > "Edward Rosten" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
>> > news:9d38qv$hid$[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
>> > > >> > That's why 98/ME will be dead this
>> > > >> > year, replaced by Windows XP.
>> > > >>
>> > > >> In exactly the same way they were replaced by Windows 2000.
>> > > >
>> > > > They weren't intended to be replaced by Windows 2000.
>> > >
>> > > They were. OK, so MS switched away from this idea as soon (pretty
>soon)
>> > > as it was evident that Win2K was not good enough, but initially, Win2K
>> > > was meant to be the great unfork in the road.
>> >
>> > Yes. Windows 98 was first intended to be the last 9x based product, but
>as
>> > Win2k grew, they realized they had too much on their plate. They had to
>cut
>> > a few things, and one of them was the consumer version, which is why
>Win98SE
>> > came out (which gives you an idea of exactly how long ago this was).
>> >
>> > Hell, it was even before the name Windows 2000 existed. It was still
>called
>> > Windows NT 5 back then.
>> >
>> > > > MS will stop selling 9x based OS's after XP is released.
>> > >
>> > > Like they did with Win2K.
>> >
>> > They didn't have a consumer version of Win2k. They DO have a consumer
>> > version of XP.
>>
>> You mean a planned version called XP. Its not for sale yet.
>
>The date is set, October 29th.
>
It's going to be quite amazing when, on the morning of October 30th, the
world will still be facing world hunger, poverty, war, and crappy Microsoft
software.
------------------------------
From: GreyCloud <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Justice Department LOVES Microsoft!
Date: Mon, 07 May 2001 12:42:44 -0700
Edward Rosten wrote:
>
> > I find that my Epson worked just fine under linux going thru GS. No
> > problems at all. Even PDF files printed quickly and were no problem.
>
> Its not the printer driver thats the problem. Some PDFs seem to choke my
> version of GS, but I've been through loads of PDFs recently.
>
> -ed
>
> --
> You can't go wrong with psycho-rats.
>
> u 9 8 e j r (at) e c s . o x . a c . u k
Which version of Gs do you have?
That may be a problem.
--
V
------------------------------
From: "Ayende Rahien" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy
Subject: Re: bank switches from using NT 4
Date: Mon, 7 May 2001 22:34:14 +0200
"David Brown" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:9d6put$g9n$[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> Consider Wine - an open source implementation of the Windows API for use
on
> unix-like systems. It has been developed, slowly, by a group of
volunteers
> with no information about the internals of Windows, and only the vague
> documentation of the API to work with. It is maybe around 80% usable
(i.e.,
> about 80% of apps are usable, or many apps are 80% useable, or something
> like that). It provides a strong backwards compatible layer on top of a
> choice of modern systems. With a fraction of the effort MS used to
produce
> the Win9x family, they could have gone straight to an NT-type kernel (or
> anything else) and built a fully (or almost fully) backwards compatible
> layer on top of it. The Wine project, and the NT family, show there is
> absolutely no technical reasons not to have done this - it is purely a
> matter of marketting and milking the consumers for more and more money.
Diffrent targets, I'm afraid.
Porting 9x applications to NT was *easy*, the hard part was to convice
people to go to 9x in the first place.
Because too many applications wouldn't work on NT (direct hardware calls,
and other stuff that NT wouldn't allow) you needed somewhat more lax attidue
in order to convert the users.
I don't think that you can put a DOS copatability layer on Linux and expect
over 99% success in running those applications.
And that was what MS needed, and that is why 9x exist.
------------------------------
From: "Ayende Rahien" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy
Subject: Re: Microsoft standards... (was Re: Windows 2000 - It is a crappy product)
Date: Mon, 7 May 2001 22:42:33 +0200
"Dave Martel" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> On Mon, 07 May 2001 17:04:02 GMT, [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Bob Hauck) wrote:
>
> >On 7 May 2001 08:14:06 -0500, Jan Johanson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> >
> >> Considering that ALL DOS applications written are written with the
knowledge
> >> of these fixed screen sizes and therefore written specifically for
these
> >> sizes - what value is there to 81x26?
> >
> >Well, none apparently. 132x90 is equally valueless, as is every other
> >size but the three "standard" ones. One could hope that NT console apps
> >aren't limited by old DOS limits, but I guess that's of no value either.
>
> For me, the value is in being able to set my console window to any
> size I want when I'm in the GUI, and having my console applications
> adapt to the new size.
Text base applications would adjust automatically, it's those applications
that makes assumtions about screen size (Edit.com, as you mention) that
can't be resized.
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (.)
Subject: Re: Linux and MP3s
Date: 7 May 2001 19:45:17 GMT
Aaron R. Kulkis <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Mark Styles wrote:
>>
>> Fellow advocates,
>>
>> I currently have my entire CD collection stored in MP3 format on a
>> 30Gb hard drive in a Windows PC.
>>
>> Because I use that PC for other things, which sometimes interfere with
>> the music, I've been busy building a new PC to be a dedicated
>> 'jukebox' on our LAN.
>>
>> I've decided as an experiment to install Linux on the new PC to see
>> how well it handles my musical needs.
>>
>> My question is, what applications should I use to emulate XingMP3
>> Player functionality?
> There are several. When you do the install, they'll be available
> on the appliations menu.
Uhh...wrong. The default xmms install (assuming that you do not have
gnome installed) drops everything in /usr/local/bin, but not into any
"applications menu".
Unless you are *specifically* using mandrake, you fucking moron.
> If you put the drive with the MP3's in during installation, and
> leave it alone (with it's current formatting, etc.), then it will
> be mounted into the filesystem on your first boot-up.
Are you insane? What the hell is the matter with you? It very much
depends on which distribution youre using, cocksmack.
=====.
--
"George Dubya Bush---the best presidency money can buy"
---obviously some Godless commie heathen faggot bastard
------------------------------
From: "Edward Rosten" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To:
comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy,comp.unix.advocacy,comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy
Subject: Re: Just how commercially viable is OSS?... (Was Re: Interesting MS speech
on OSS/GPL ( /. hates it so it's good))
Date: Mon, 07 May 2001 21:49:08 +0100
>> > Is this the name of Ellison's new Yacht?
>>
>> No, no, no... everyone knows the name of his new Yacht is:
>> "I HAVE A BIGGER PENIS THAN BILL GATES"
>
> He must feel the need to have that cause he sure has less money than
> Bill.
Do you because you have less money than Bill?
-Ed
--
You can't go wrong with psycho-rats.
u 9 8 e j r (at) e c s . o x . a c . u k
------------------------------
From: "Erik Funkenbusch" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: How to hack with a crash, another Microsoft "feature"
Date: Mon, 7 May 2001 14:48:51 -0500
"Chad Everett" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> On Mon, 7 May 2001 13:56:28 -0500, Erik Funkenbusch <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:
> >"Chad Everett" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
> >news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> >> On Mon, 7 May 2001 05:11:24 -0500, Erik Funkenbusch <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> >wrote:
> >> >
> >> >You're forgetting. I already offered that it would be quite possible
to
> >> >device an encoding scheme where the same sequence of characters are
not
> >> >encoded the same way twice. Thus, all your occurances of A and O
would
> >be
> >> >different for each time they occured. Suppose I used the 4 bit key as
an
> >> >index into a completely arbitrarily chosen letter translation table.
> >>
> >> How do you distribute the translation table?
> >
> >You don't need to. Both sides have the table. We're not talking about
PKI
> >here, we're talking about two sides (say the Pentagon and some foreign
> >embassy). You can have totally unique algorithms for each embassy, so
that
> >should one become compromised, your other embassies aren't. It's only
> >purpose is encryption between point a and point b, never point c, d, or
e,
> >etc...
> >
>
> If that's the case then the translation table AND your 4-bit index are
> "the key" and you're not really talking about a 4-bit key anymore.
If a key unlocks a door, it's still the key that unlocks it, regardless of
whether it's a 100 year old warded lock or state of the art medico lock.
The complexity is irrelevant.
------------------------------
From: "Edward Rosten" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy
Subject: Re: Microsoft standards... (was Re: Windows 2000 - It is a crappy product)
Date: Mon, 07 May 2001 21:50:44 +0100
>> DOS (ie what the whol;e text based stuff in NT is loosely based on) was
>> able to work with 80x25, 80x43 and 80x50. Pretty much nothing was able
>> to work with anything else. Try getting it to work with 81x26.
>
> Considering that ALL DOS applications written are written with the
> knowledge of these fixed screen sizes and therefore written specifically
> for these sizes - what value is there to 81x26?
Precisely my point. As for 81x26, there is no value especially, other
than it is a specific instance of not 80x25 which is very useful.
-Ed
--
You can't go wrong with psycho-rats.
u 9 8 e j r (at) e c s . o x . a c . u k
------------------------------
From: "Erik Funkenbusch" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Why is Microsoft opening more Windows source code?
Date: Mon, 7 May 2001 14:49:47 -0500
"Rob S. Wolfram" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> Erik Funkenbusch <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> >"jtnews" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
> >news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> >> If open source is so bad, according to Microsoft,
> >> why are they suddenly changing their tune now?
> >Open Source isn't bad, according to MS. The GPL is. They support Open
> >Source licenses such as the BSDL.
>
> Do they? What software have they BSDLed?
I believe the front page extensions are BSDL'd, or similar.
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