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"Patching" is a leadership and management style, also. I have seen numerous leaders who eschew the more expensive (all at once) solutions that would strike at the root of the problem(s), and eliminate for good any vulnerabilities. They opt, instead, for patches/band-aids, that fix the immediate problem without striking at the root cause.
This can happen in any portion of business activities. I have watched my own workplace be hacked numerous times, but the only response is to try to track down the hacker, and not to improve security.
I say this because of the comments from the Princeton researchers, who pointed not to software encryption, but to the TCG solutions as a whole. They said "Trusted Computing" was vulnerable, not just software encryption. This misinformation may be enough to cause hesitation and further "patching" approaches among senior IT professionals. It also reinforces a dogmatic belief of theirs that nothing is unhackable.
I wonder if the Princeton researchers are among those who hate the DRM movement and identify Trusted Computing as a possible facilitating system for DRM. Perhaps that is why they chose to speak as they did. Politically, that might be a point for Wave to make if they are questioned about the study while on sales calls with customers.
I am glad to see Steven on the offensive immediately. That's exactly what is needed right now. I think that this may indeed be a penultimate moment for Wave. It is gratifying to see SKS quoted immediately- it seems that the reporters knew that Wave was the center of expertise for hardware based Trusted Computing. Perhaps Seagate and Wave will produce a demonstration of sorts of the security of TPMs against this type of attack. Or, invite the Princeton researchers to try to hack the Seagate/Wave solution. That would put us at the the forefront of this issue, and provide many multiples of return on our investment in a bit of advertising and demonstrating right now. The free publicity would be tremendous.
So, go get 'em, Steven (and Seagate)
The best Republican speech
Of the last century:
http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/dwightdeisenhowerfarewell.html
excerpts:
Throughout America's adventure in free government, our basic purposes have been to keep the peace, to foster progress in human achievement, and to enhance liberty, dignity, and integrity among peoples and among nations. To strive for less would be unworthy of a free and religious people. Any failure traceable to arrogance, or our lack of comprehension, or readiness to sacrifice would inflict upon us grievous hurt, both at home and abroad...
Crises there will continue to be. In meeting them, whether foreign or domestic, great or small, there is a recurring temptation to feel that some spectacular and costly action could become the miraculous solution to all current difficulties. A huge increase in newer elements of our defenses; development of unrealistic programs to cure every ill in agriculture; a dramatic expansion in basic and applied research -- these and many other possibilities, each possibly promising in itself, may be suggested as the only way to the road we wish to travel....
Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense. We have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security alone more than the net income of all United States cooperations -- corporations.
Now this conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence -- economic, political, even spiritual -- is felt in every city, every Statehouse, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet, we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources, and livelihood are all involved. So is the very structure of our society.
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.
Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades. In this revolution, research has become central; it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.
Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers. The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present -- and is gravely to be regarded.
Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite....
During the long lane of the history yet to be written, America knows that this world of ours, ever growing smaller, must avoid becoming a community of dreadful fear and hate, and be, instead, a proud confederation of mutual trust and respect. Such a confederation must be one of equals. The weakest must come to the conference table with the same confidence as do we, protected as we are by our moral, economic, and military strength. That table, though scarred by many fast frustrations -- past frustrations, cannot be abandoned for the certain agony of disarmament -- of the battlefield.
I was really hoping that
The far right was mostly just focused on abortion rights, and that the other extremes of their positions would be disregarded. But, I can see that they have been more influential than I had thought.
Just another reason that the Republicans aren't the Republicans anymore.
Colin Powell would be a good choice. He would know how to deal with the entrenched Pentagon influences/turf wars. He's an honorable person, as far as I can tell.
It all reminds me of this joke
I was walking across a bridge one day, and I saw a man standing on the edge, about to jump off. So I ran over and said "Stop! Don't do it!"
"Why shouldn't I?" he said.
"Well, there's so much to live for!"
"Like what?"
"Well... are you religious?"
He said yes. I said, "Me too! Are you Christian or Buddhist?"
"Christian."
"Me too! Are you Catholic or Protestant ?
"Protestant."
"Me too! Are you Episcopalian or Baptist?"
"Baptist"
"Wow! Me too! Are you Baptist Church of God or Baptist Church of the Lord?"
"Baptist Church of God!"
"Me too! Are you original Baptist Church of God, or are you reformed Baptist Church of God?"
"Reformed Baptist Church of God!"
"Me too! Are you Reformed Baptist Church of God, reformation of 1879, or Reformed Baptist Church of God, reformation of 1915?"
He said, "Reformed Baptist Church of God, reformation of 1915!"
I said, "Die, heretic scum", and pushed him off.
Hi Alea
Well reasoned, and useful post on your part. I knew that Fish's thoughts would strike a chord in you. But, I meant to make a different point.
I think that what we have seen here today is an attempt to control the speech and thoughts of others. When the parties participating in a debate turn to name calling and derision, or to non-sensical posts for the purpose of derailing an exchange of ideas, that is censorship in another form. It uses social ostracism as it's method of enforcement.
It's interesting to me that the political debate in this country relies so much on this type of censorship. If you fail to say the correct terms/ideas, the ostracism police charge with batons drawn-and the attempts to embarsss the offending individual begin. That's why I don't mind the occasional removal of a post on any board, and why I don't buy into the "free speech" mantra on the "Bob."
It's too bad, really. We are far more alike than different in America. We all believe in our country, we just think we have different paths to it's success.
Stanley Fish on free speech
http://www.lib.latrobe.edu.au/AHR/archive/Issue-February-1998/fish.html
Q : In your work you have stated that free speech must be understood against a background of the originary exclusion which gives it meaning. What are the conditions giving rise to this originary exclusion?
A : Before I got into the First Amendment or free speech business I was for many years and still am a teacher of English Renaissance poetry and prose, especially that of John Milton. Milton's contribution to the history of the discussion of free speech and censorship is of course the Areopagitica, published in 1643, a vigorous and eloquent protest against a licencing law passed by the parliament.
Much of the Areopagitica is a celebration of toleration in matters of expression, for reasons that have now become more familiar to us: the more information the better able are we to choose wisely; the more information the better are we able to exercise our intellects so that they become more refined and perceptive. Another part of Milton's argument is that when something is suppressed it does not go away. It just takes on a romantic underground life and flourishes rather than being brought to the light of day where it might be refuted. All of these are today familiar arguments and components of free speech rhetoric.
There is one part, however, of Milton's Areopagitica that is rarely noticed in such discussions and when noticed is noticed with some embarrassment. About three quarters of the way through the tract Milton says, "Now you understand of course", and the tone in his prose suggests that he assumes that most of his readers have always understood this, "that when I speak of toleration and free expression I don't mean Catholics. Them we extirpate".1 Milton's admirers, especially those who have linked him to John Stuart Mill as one of the cornerstones of the free speech tradition, have difficulty with this passage and attempt to explain it away by saying that Milton, because of the limitation of his own historical period, was not able to see what we are able to see. The idea is that our conception of free speech is more capacious, more truly free, than this because we do not have an exclusion up our sleeves, ready to be sprung.
But the difference between Milton and us is a difference in what we would exclude from the zone of "free speech", not a difference between exclusion and inclusion. When Milton names Catholic discourse as the exception to his toleration he does so because in his view Catholic speech is subversive of everything speech, in general, is supposed to do -- keep the conversation going, continue the search for Truth. In short, if speech is really to be free in the sense that he desires, Catholics cannot be allowed freely to produce it. This might seem paradoxical, but in fact it is Milton's recognition of a general condition: free speech is what's left over when you have determined which forms of speech cannot be permitted to flourish. The "free speech zone" emerges against the background of what has been excluded. Everyone begins by assuming what shouldn't be said; otherwise there would be no point to saying anything.
Another example: one of the foremost proponents of free speech in this country is Nat Hentoff, a journalist well known for his jazz criticism and who has also taken up the cause of free speech no matter how disreputable or offensive the speech in question. But about two years ago he recanted, when he drew the line at campuses allowing certain forms of anti-semitic speech to flourish. Disciples of a certain Muslim group came to campuses and began to talk about "bagel eating vermin who had escaped from caves in the middle ages and were now, as then, infecting the world". Hentoff said this has gone too far. My point is that everyone has such a trigger point, which is either acknowledged at the beginning or emerges in a moment of crisis.
There is no-one who believes that everything should be said. Most of us today would not say, "Well, of course, you understand I don't mean toleration of Catholics". But we would say things like, "I don't mean toleration of neo-nazis" or "I don't mean toleration of discourses advocating child molestation". There is no-one in the history of the world who has ever been in favour of free speech.....
Q : How do you assess the contribution of Critical Race Theory2 to the discourse grounding First Amendment rhetoric?
A : I think Critical Race Theorists are in a difficult position once they accept First Amendment rhetoric and look for a moral high ground from the vantage point of which racist speakers will either be shown the error of their ways or universally condemned. Insofar as critical race theorists buy into liberalism's valorization of rational discourse, they will think that their job is to show that racist speech is irrational and therefore is in some sense not speech at all. But this is to mistake both the nature of the enemy and the strategy for defeating him.
Those who utter racist speech (as we call it) would not accept that designation. The people that we think of as racist do not wake up in the morning and say to themselves "Today I'm going to go out and spew racist speech". What they say (and it's exactly what we say) is, "Today I am going to go out and tell the truth." Once you realise that racists don't think of themselves as racists but as tellers of the truth, then you realise that hate speech or racist speech as we designate it is not an anomaly, is not a cognitive mistake, is not a correctable error, is not something that can be diagnosed and therefore cured, but is in fact the rationality and truth telling of a vision we happen to despise.
The correct response to a vision or a morality that you despise is not to try and cure it or to make its adherents sit down and read John Stuart Mill's On Liberty, that's not going to do the job. The only way to fight hate speech or racist speech is to recognize it as the speech of your enemy and what you do in response to the speech of your enemy is not prescribe a medication for it but attempt to stamp it out. So long as Critical Race Theory and others fall into the liberal universalist assumption of regarding hate speech as some kind of anomaly which could be recognized as such by everyone, they're going to lose the game. They will win the game only if they really try to win it, rather than falling in with Justice Brandeis' pronouncement that "Sunshine is the best disinfectant".
This bromide flies in the face of all recorded history which tells us that forms of speech, once they get into circulation, do not wither away in the light of day; rather they attract the attention of some hearers, and begin to circulate in a more effective way. I know that this is heresy in the liberal discourse to which we all are, in some sense, committed. But it seems to me that I must agree with the American politician and journalist, Pat Buchanan, who once said, "If you can pollute the physical environment, you can pollute the cultural and mental environment".
Given the tone that has appeared on the boards, I thought this interview would be of interest. Racists, hate groups, terrorists, ant-semites, etc. are enemy enough to justify stamping out their words and opinions. Must Democrats and Republicans behave as if each other were the enemy too?
This is relevant, I think
Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
I used to think those very thoughts
But as information came out, I think it became apparent that GWB and his advisors played a little fast and loose with the facts. Don't forget-I voted for him twice, so it is with no small amount of chagrin that I write this. We went in too quickly, and without a good understanding of the forces at work within Iraq that would serve to derail attempts to establish democracy. He also allowed Donald Rumsfeld to limit the size of the invading and occupying forces to amounts too small to control the countryside while the transistion to democracy took place. It was a collosal screw-up, and has produced a mess that we are obligated to clean up.
Hi cslewis (edit)
Have you ever seen this performance of the Declaration?
Waverider
In any debate, the moment of victory arrives when all that your oppenent has left at his disposal is name calling.
Thank you for your time
Over and out
The weren't there before the war, Waverider
Saddam didn't like them, as he felt they would challenge his secular government. There weren't any WMD's either.
Hi Orda
It's obvious that the Iraq war, and other privatization ventures in our government have become corporate feeding frenzies. I hope that the Dems nail them all.
Waverider
I'll make the obvious retort...I can't say what he WILL do, but I can guarantee you he won't invade some totally uninvolved country, spend billions on the war, and mire us in a no win situation.
Hi Blue Fin
Something to think about-The Pentagon won't even submit estimated costs for operations in Iraq. They in essence ask for a blank check. If we start pulling back-and-if we were to end the cost-plus compensation for the contractors, and not pay $44 for a six pack of coke anymore, there will be plenty of money. Obama is not looking to increase expenditures, he is just going to spend money on different things, like rebuilding our roads and bridges. Been to Minnesota lately?
In any case, it is the Republicans who have been spending like drunken sailors, while cutting taxes. Also, U. S. taxes are still fairly low in comparison to the rest of the world. There are plenty of loopholes in the tax code to close, which would generate more money, as well. There are lots of ways that he can pay for his programs without a general tax increase. In fact, I haven't seen anywhere that he has said anything about a tax increase. He has demonstrated how we can pay for his programs by changing allocations in the budget.
Only if we include pictures.....
The debate is over
Clinton failed to draw Obama into any substantial error, and her attacks on him drew little applause. Her line about the alleged "plagiarism"-"That's not change you can believe in, that's change you xerox," was lightly booed. Clinton's strength was the detail of her policy proposals.
Obama looked a bit fidgety at first, but settled in later and spoke as he does on the campaign trail with measured cadences. His best line- "The notion that my campaign is just words somehow suggests that the 19-20 million people who support me...and all of the major papers here in Texas...are somehow delusional."
I don't think this nights exchange will push many people in a new direction, and that should score as a win for Obama. Surprisingly, Clinton stuck with essentially the same tactics and topics that have been producing insufficient results so far. I am pretty surprised at that. Perhaps Obama is so likeable that he is not assailable, while there are plenty of people who dislike Clinton, saving Obama from conducting the attacks himself.
Advantage Obama.
Hi Alea and Weby
These are of interest.
The money:
http://www.forbes.com/media/2006/05/Overall_Tax_Burden_Governemt_Spending.pdf
Where some of it is going:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-kbr-war-profiteers-feb21,1,5231766.story
More "Expenditures"
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/16076312/the_great_iraq_swindle/3
This cost plus system is beyond ludicrous. I hope that when the Democrats get in they investigate this and indict these people for running up costs to increase their profits.
U. S. Budget quiz answer
Can you name the President (and year) who proposed the first budget exceeding 1 trillion dollars, 2 trillion dollars, and 3 trillion dollars?
Answers
1 Trillion- 1987-Ronald Reagan
2 Trillion- 2001-George W. Bush
3 Trillion- 2008-George W. Bush
The Republicans aren't the Republicans any more.
A U. S. Budget quiz
Can you name the President (and year) who proposed the first budget exceeding 1 trillion dollars, 2 trillion dollars, and 3 trillion dolars?
Hi Weby-E Pluribus Unum
has been on life support here for most of our history. The Civil War is just the most extreme example of American intolerance. Here are some other infamous incidents.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_phillips_war
-in which Whites kill Indians to settle disputes over Land in New England
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacon%27s_Rebellion
Bacon wanted more killing of them danged Indians, the government wasn’t doing it, and he attacked Jamestown to force more agression-and kill the rich "gentlemen."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whiskey_rebellion
Once the Revolutionary War was over, our government attacked farmers who protested taxes on whiskey.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trail_of_tears
The Cherokee Tribe was forced off it’s lands and made to walk from Georgia to Oklahoma. (Some of my ancestors were in this-I’m one-sixteenth Cherokee).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pottawatomie_Massacre
John Brown & sons gets medieval on pro slavery people in Kansas. Broad swords- they used broad swords.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Draft_Riots
Irish immigrants attack free Blacks in New York in protest of the imposition of a draft in the Civil War.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Orleans_Race_Riot
Whites in New Orleans kill any free Black protesting the denial of their suffrage.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Springfield_race_riot
Whites attack Blacks in Illinois capital city. Blacks are beaten bloody on the street in front of Abraham Lincoln’s home
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulsa_Race_Riot
Whites burn out a successful Black enclave in Tulsa. White Businessmen wanted it all for them selves.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herrin_massacre
Labor violence breaks out in southern Illinois. Immigrant scab miners are murdered.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shelton_Brothers_Gang
Gang warfare during prohibition.
Note the use of aerial bombing in Tulsa, and by the Shelton Gang
In the seventies, Sly and the Family Stone had this hit song, criticizing our propensity for subdividing ourselves:
Sometimes I'm right then I can be wrong
My own beliefs are in my songs
A butcher, a banker, a drummer and then
Makes no difference what group I'm in
I am everyday people
There is a blue one who can't accept
The green one for living with
a black ones tryin' to be a skinny one
Different strokes for different folks
And so on and so on and scooby dooby dooby
Ooh sha sha
We gotta live together
I am no better and neither are you
We're all the same whatever we do
You love me you hate me
You know me and then
Still can't figure out the bag I'm in
I am everyday people
There is a new man
That doesn't like the short man
For being such a rich one
That will not help the poor one
Different strokes for different folks
And so on and so on scooby dooby dooby
Ooh sha sha
We got to live together
There is a yellow one that won't
Accept the black one
That won't accept the red one
That won't accept the white one
Different strokes for different folks
And so on and so on and
Scooby dooby dooby
Ooh sha sha
I am everyday people
There’s been plenty of Pluribus, and little Unum-and only sporadic scooby dooby dooby (which, lets face it, we could all use more of).
Makes Obama even more amazing-right? Everyone is also chiding Michelle Obama for her “Proud for the first time” remark. Consider the above as the backdrop for her remarks. –Short version of conclusion-anyone criticizing Michelle Obama is a pea brain.
Alea-that brings us back to economics
Until larger nation states existed, those who would lead in Europe needed the religious power that the church conveyed. The new, large nation states of Europe were woven together by the richest, most powerful lords-growing rich from the reemergence of trade, and thus able to finance wars that lasted years. Once the larger nation states emerged, they could disregard edicts from Rome, and even leave the Catholic Church, as England did. So, from 1077, when Pope Gregory VII was able to force Henry IV of France to walk barefoot through the Alps to apologize for challenging the Popes investiture rights, to Pope Innocent III's reign when he placed all of England under Interdict, and made King John a vassal-things changed quickly such that by 1302, King Philip IV of France actually arrested Pope Boniface VIII. After that, when a lightning bolt did not strike Philip down, the mystique of church power was broken.
If Philip can arrest a Pope, certainly it was safer than had been thought to criticize the church. Those early criticisms helped foster the real world inquiry that gave birth to scientific thought.
Hi Alea
I would add the economic side of it. After the Dark Ages began to ease, there was a great rebirth of trade. Fairs were sponsored by lords to try to attract tax revenue. Serfs began to gain their freedom, as well, as lords sought to grow the size of towns in their fiefs, and to increase economic activity. This expansion of trade, and new freedom played no small role in the growing wave of secular knowledge. People have to get out and meet and trade ideas. Money must be plentiful enough to support scientific activities.
The tension that Nicaea created had several facets. Your assertions are correct, but it also helped create the kind of power that could eventually calm what was a violent society in Western Europe. Feudalism was, in the words of Terry Jones, a time in which armored thugs took turns beating the crap out of each other. This doesn't create an atmosphere that is conducive to trade. The creation of unified Christian policies also led to unified followers of the Pope. Religion calmed down the "Barbarians" who had settled in Western Europe such that by the 1300s, trade was reviving. If not for the Black Death, we might have had a Renaissance 100 years sooner.
Awk- as an American, Cuba is not the blunder that irritates me most. Our worst blunder was Iran, squashing the birth of democracy there out of fear of the Communists, and to serve oil interests. We can't quit picking that scab either, can we?
I've never bought the freedom versus Islamic Fundamentalism idea. I think that people like Al Quaida are imperialists, plain and simple. They want the old Muslim Empire back, Caliphs and all. If they were western Europeans, they would be seeking to recreate the Roman Empire.
I've always thought of the Council of Nicaea as Christianity's meeting to get their message straight, - kind of like what John Calvin did for the Calvinists with "The Institutes of the Christian Religion."
It told Christians what the proper beliefs were, so they could quit killing each other over their differences of opinion-and get busy converting Pagans. I hadn't thought of it in relation to the eventual rebirth of scientific thought. I guess I always thought of the resulting time period as one in which the church had a great degree of power, and people looked first to the Bible for answers to their questions about the physical world. Thomas Aquinas, anyone?
I suppose that the degree of power that the church wielded in the middle ages helped lead to the corruption that led people like John Huss and John Wycliffe to start to openly question the church leadership. I also suppose that the power of the church led Philip IV to try to sieze control of Christianity's leadership, which then diminished it's prestige and power.
But, I've generally followed a more economically based path to the Scientific Revolution and then the Enlightenment. Italian city states grew rich, which made possible the support of artists and scientists. The trade routes that the Italians established into northern Europe served to spread ideas, and as usually happens, ideas lead to more ideas until a profound discovery or insight occurs. Like Gallileo.
Hi Alea
I've had a little experience at counseling, so I take a bit of a different approach to things. Sometimes it works well, and I can help people, and other times they look at me like a dog hearing their master's voice emanating from a telephone.
Mostly, though, when people get into these negative behavior patterns, it takes them a while to see that the negativity offers no profit, and sometimes increases their pain.
FWIW, I didn't see you do anything to Micro that you didn't do to me in, for example, our evolution discussions. You thought I had a few incorrect assertions in my posts, and pointed them out in a straightforward way. It's just that Micro for some reason, was not in a place mentally to have his assertions challenged on that particlular day, and has since chosen to hold on to his unhappiness. It's his loss, to the extent that people won't take his posts seriously anymore.
Build a bed of nails, and someone will put you in it.
(I know this post is way off topic, and won't be offended if you choose to delete it.)
I think it is less a case of poor understanding, and more one of hurt feelings. He took offense at your questioning of his assertions, and now has found solace at the "Bob." I think he is being deliberately obtuse, and seeking to act as an agent provocateur. I think he understands a good bit more than he says, as he stated to Gokite, while some nuances have not occurred to him yet, and given his current approach will never be admitted by him, until Wave's revenues prove it. He has been wounded by Wavoid Nation, and WILL EXPOSE THIER FAULTS!!
(In the nicest way possible)
Hi Alea
I suppose that Micro and others who still believe as he does (and there are a lot of them...not on these boards, but among IT pros), are simply stuck in the current and soon to be past model of security architecture. Or lack of one. Right now, many organizations use a piecemeal approach to security, buying applications that protect against what they view as their biggest vulnerablilities. This produces a Rube Goldberg machine kind of security, with layer upon layer of protective applications. Each one protects against a different thing.
Thus, if you don't need a part of these layers of security, you don't buy it. That's how IT people have thought about security. To ask them to jump from that to the world of Trusted Computing is a pretty far leap. It's an entirely new thought process.
Hi Alea
You know, you listen to Obama take on Clinton's attacks, and turn them back upon her over the last few days, and you can see why he was first in his class at Harvard Law.
Clinton: Obama uses nice words, but they are just words, no substance...
Obama: I have a dream! Just words? We have nothing to fear but fear itself-Just words?
Brilliant riposte
The debates with McCain are going to be fun.
Hi Weby
I suppose from what you and Alea have written, the sauce shall stay secret, for now. You two have followed this long and diligently enough that I am sure if the answer to my question had been stated before, you would know.
Besides, ask a chef "What the hell is in this sauce?" and you may get a knife thrown at you...
As an aside, I much enjoy our digressions here, and am gratified at the constructively critical approach you both take to our topics, and my scribblings.
Meanwhile, I am stuck here in tax return hell. Flat tax, anyone? Not so sure it's the right or correct thing to do, but tonight, it sounds good.
Thanks for taking the time to dispose of my curiosities.
Thanks, Alea- I like that end game
See my post to Weby for more on my struggles with this. Obviously Wave has got the goods, or companies wouldn't keep coming to them for help with Trusted Computing technology. I am really trying to grasp how Wave enables all of these things, and makes them work together. I feel that if I could know that, It would give me a better handle on how hard it would be for other companies to replicate Wave's work without copyright enfringement. I also feel that if I knew the answer to this, I might understand the nature of "the slog" a bit better. If there is much customization required for new applications required, then that helps explain why things always seem to take so danged long in Waveland.
Weby- the feeling is mutual
Thanks for providing the email. I feel like I get the whole key transfer aspect of encryption and attestation, as well as VPNs, but that is not the kernel of truth that I seek. This has bugged me for some time, and it may be sufficiently technical that only one of Wave's cryptographers could answer it.
While I accept(and the many bundling deals validate) that Wave is the only one to be able to make key transfer work seemlessly among many diffferent types and instantiations of Trusted Platform Modules, I don't understand what Wave has that makes it so. In other words, what the heck is it that makes Wave's secret sauce so unique and so necessary? I know it has to do with the transfer of cryptographic keys between different cryptographic key generators/decryptors, I also know that it has to do with some type of algorithm that conducts "smoothing," (I think that's the right term). What I don't understand is why Intel wants that from Wave, but went to the trouble to build a chipset that seems to do what Wave's ETS already does, as SKS' email suggests.
"We have deployed full wave software through out wave and we use it every day for VPN access windows domain authentication and data protection."
Why didn't Intel just put a TPM on the motherboard, bundle ETS, and offer KTM and be done with it? It seems that there is something more here, or am I overthinking thigs?
Awk, Weby, and Alea
First, thanks for the info on secure input/output. It sounds like if an organization deploys FDE, they lock down data at rest, while if they deploy FDE and Danbury, they lock down data at rest and in transit-at least within a computer and it's related peripherals. Is that an accurate statement?
One thing I have always wondered-I thought that Embassy enabled all of these functions, but since Intel and Seagate have developed separate utilities to do these things-and they are using wave's IP to do it, I must have been wrong. Why would Intel and Seagate develop separate utilities, and not just license Wave's Embassy? What am I missing? Obviously Wave is needed, or they would not be bundled. So, what exactly does Wave do for FDE and Danbury? Is it simply a matter of operating system/bios issues that are sufficiently different across platforms and applications that require a different modification for each application/system?
I know, I should just RTFM...
Matt- No messiah
Just someone who actually interests me and that I can see is actively trying to do things a different way-at least, so far. I expect the mainstream press will begin airing some of the topics covered in the Lasky piece. Today on CNN, media pundits were beginning to wonder whether the press has given Obama a free pass up to this point. So, it will be interesting to see what comes up from the press now. That's his next big hurdle. Obama has Hilary Clinton pinned, and she knows it, that's why she only makes the most oblique of attacks on him now. The press need not worry about polls, except for ratings and readership.
Tampa-sometimes kiljoy is the right thing to be
I hear you, and I agree that given past performance, lets just get full deployment of the first year's 12,000 before we think of further implications. I just wish we could strike a balance in the discussions on these boards between all out hype and cataclysmic pessimism. The bipolar nature of these boards gives me whiplash.
Hi Blue Fin
Here is why I say free markets are a failure of governmental policy:
Governmental policy is the expression of the desires of the body politic. Those desires will always favor that which improves the quality of life of the members of the body politic. Businesses do not pursue improvements in quality of life for the people of a country. They pursue profits. Pursuit of profits is not evil, and I am not in favor of a socialistic approach to this problem. I do think that capitalism provides an important venue for the creative and ambitious parts of the human spirit to benefit us all. But, there are problems that need fixing, problems that businessmen will not fix on their own.
Some economists would argue that free markets are self policing. They say that when people find out about corporate misdeeds, they will punish that company by not buying its products. This can be true, as the campaign against tuna companies to make their tuna “dolphin free” suggest.
However, I would argue that this is not the norm.
I think that if they had the opportunity, businesses would do away with the free market. They were moving towards monopolies in the latter part of the 1800s and early 1900s before a series of reformers took them on. Today, companies short circuit the free market in two important ways that come easily to mind.
First, they employ sophisticated marketing schemes, using psychology to achieve “Branding,” which leads consumers to lessen the amount of critical thinking that they employ when making a decision to purchase a product.
Think of “Baseball, Hotdogs, Apple Pie and Chevrolet.” What does that have to do with the quality of their cars? Nothing. It is an attempt to use preexisting feelings in American consumers to get them to buy a Chevy.
By using tactics such as this, corporations seek to hijack the “free” market. The notion of the free market presupposes that allowing the mechanisms of the free market to function unfettered will lead to better, cheaper products and more efficient companies. How does using people’s psychology against them as in the Chevrolet campaign result in cheaper cars, or a more efficient company? It doesn’t, because it encourages people to buy simply because of their love for America.
The free market is really a market of ideas. Those ideas produce wealth for a company when they result in superior products or production efficiencies. By using psychology to goad or trick people into buying products, companies circumvent free market forces. It happens all the time. People in marketing even have a term for it. They call it “created needs.”
The second way in which companies seek to avoid free market principles is when they lavish money upon public officials, both while campaigning, and while in office. Defense contractors do this, giving generously to get the right candidate elected, and then expecting favoritism when they take office.
Defense contractors will also deliberately establish production facilities for defense projects in the home districts of key congressional committee members. Whenever a vote comes up regarding continued funding for those projects produced in a congressman’s district, the defense contractor can be sure to have the congressman’s support for the project.
If the markets were truly free, congressional decisions would be based solely upon the quality of the product, and the need for the product.
The markets are not free, and it is because the corporations don’t want them to be. They complain about governments obstructing “Free Market Forces” when it suits their needs, and quietly circumvent those same “Free Markets” when free market forces might be inconvenient.
It would be a mistake for our government to say “let the free market rule,” and take a hands off approach to business when, in reality, governments are an important protector of free market forces.
Re-150,000 seats
An important point is missing from the discussion of the 150,000 seat opportunity described by SKS in his most recent presentation. While it is true that 35,000 of those seats are actual laptops, which is what FDE is currently targeted to, and about 12,000 of those might be upgraded per year, there is more to it than just those numbers.
How many computers do you suppose that the 150,000 seat company has? Do you suppose that there is no chance that once FDE becomes available for desktops that they would extend FDE and ERAS across all of their networks? Once we are in the door, and Wave and FDE are encrypting/protecting their laptops, we are right there when they consider encrypting desktops.
So, while you can take SKS to task for pumping up the actual current opportunity-as he has done in the past- we may score most or all of those 150,000 seats eventually.
Hi Alea
I suppose that to the degree that a keyboard or printer needs to communicate with the motherboard, they will need the ability to encrypt what data they send. Like keystrokes-which can be stolen. I wonder if Trusted Computing principles could eliminate the possiblity of stealing keystrokes? Wave used to promote a Trusted Keyboard, right?
If motherboards must communicate with printers, and printers must communicate back, that is information flowing in both directions. Shouldn't both flows be encrypted? In fact, isn't one type of hacker attack made possible by the hacker using software that fools networks into thinking the hacking software is just a printer?
The more devices that commmunicate with the network, the more need for interoperablity amongst all the devices and the network.
Perhaps Awk or Sheldon will weigh in /e
Alea-where Danbury is going?
Is the following chain correct? FDE secures data at rest, using the trusted computing approach, whether software or hardwre encryption. Does Danbury now safeguard data on the move between the FDE drive and the motherboard, and until the data leaves the motherboard? If that is true, is it a logical assumption that trusted peripherals like keyboards and printers are next?
Or, have I failed to RTFM, as Sheldon Levine says?