The NSA doesn't target anymore than a fisherman targets every tuna.

They are doing a dragnet, if you become a person of interest ... THEN they have this big collection of data on you to use, but before that, you're just another random datapoint that they aren't expending resources on ... or wasting their precious exploits on.

If you find a back door, you publish it IMMEDIATELY, and let the NSA found out that you know about it by reading it on Google News.

Their security letter doesn't do much at that point.

What do you do, find the bug and then go ask them if you can publish it?

I don't think you understand whats going on. PBKDF has absolutely nothing to do with 'protecting' your password. Its done because passwords suck ass for encryption keys.

TrueCrypt is taking your password and turning it into something USEFUL as a key for encryption, not 'protecting it'.

Standard passwords are pathetically low on entropy, a full twitter or SMS post is still not 256 bits of useful entropy, and its unlikely your passwords are anywhere near that. I admit I don't know your password, but if you're only using the standard character set, I can safely say its pathetically low on entropy. You need full binary keys generated from good random sources, but you'll never remember that, will you? Imaging trying to type it somewhere.

What the hashing does is takes your password and contorts it into a larger key that is more useful than whatever pathetic string of text you throw at it. It does so in such a way that, like all hashing processes are supposed to, you can't go backwards because bits are discarded along the way.

2000 rounds is pretty low, but thats only a tiny small part of the encryption/decryption process. And your password (as I understand true crypt) really just projects are larger private key, which is what is actually used for encryption. Its been a while since I've looked at or used TrueCrypt, so I may be wrong about that last particular bit.

For a full description: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P...

I do write encryption software for a living. And again, its not about protecting your password or making it harder to guess, its about turning your crappy password into a useful encryption key, nothing more.

Flat out false.

First they do some basic diagnostics, then they tell you to return to an Apple Store if possible, or they'll arrange to have it shipped if the store is too far away, depending on your warranty, that may mean you pay for shipping.

I've had 3 hardware failures in the last 14 years (I switched when OSX 10.0 became available to the public), none of them required me to 'wipe the device clean', as that wasn't the problem. My latest 'failure' was simply that my display was one of the Retinas' that ghosted slightly if you left the display static ... in my case I intentionally left it on for 8 hours and ... yep, ghosting for a few minutes after that. Took it too the Apple store, they ran the hardware diagnostic (Hold D while booting on modern Macs), then the screen test for this purpose ... it didn't quite meet the requirements for replacement (ghosting had to be visible for more than 15 seconds or something) ... but since the guy saw what I was talking about, he put it in for a replacement display anyway. Oh, we're out of those displays, come back on Thursday ...

They also replaced a main board in an older laptop due to water damage and a one because I dropped it with a USB device plugged in and it landed on the USB device. Obvious hardware problems require no OS reinstall.

You sir, are an idiot.

Voting in Hitler would not be a good thing, even if he is the most likely person to replace a democrat OR republican incumbent.

If you're too stupid to properly analyze who you are voting for DON'T VOTE.

I want everyone with a brain to vote ... I do not want morons who vote based on something stupid like a single line item on a bill that just makes people responsible for debts they were responsible for already, even if I think its ridiculous to try and claim it 50 years later.

Everyone who can vote SHOULD VOTE, but ONLY IF they are going to actually put effort into investigating who they are voting for. If all you do is listen to whats spewed at you on the TV, Radio and various billboards and signs ... you aren't a qualified voter, you are a problem.

Not likely, just like the feds didn't do anything to the armed militia that just closed an Interstate highway and told the Burea of Land Management to fuck off.

http://offgridsurvival.com/mil...

I'm not condoning this behavior in the case of the link above, but it happens

10 year old debts DO NOT DISAPPEAR.

At 10 years in fact, the IRS is legally granted the power to charge you interest. 100%, PER DAY. Thank Al Capone for that one.

Yes, he will. He'll have an Android or iPhone emulator instead, or whatever was relatively 'new' and novel at the right time in his life for him to remember how much of a good time it was.

Everyone gets nostalgic, but its not for the same thing. He'll have his own thing to get misty eyed over, what it may be, I can't say. May even be something like going to 2d movies, or hanging out in smoky bars (since they seem to be vanishing) ...

Its pretty much required at this point for us to do something to correct the problem in one way or another, even if its as simple as stopping the massive amounts of emissions and planting a few more trees (or some other actual carbon consumer, I am not qualified to make that particular determination :)

What is 'verisign' ... I mean, I know of the company named verisign that functions as a root CA, but they don't have magical certs that are safe, they are just like all other certs.

A quick Google search yields too much about the company, can you point me at what you're referring to so I can clear my ignorance?

Hate to break it to you, but you didn't deserve the job.

Your nagios config was broken, and if you were using some SMS service that batched the messages, your choice of providers was broken.

How did your boss get the alert ... oh thats right ... by using a reliable message delivery platform instead of an unreliable one.

Read your post again, and continue to re-read it until you understand why it 'cost you a job'

Lets establish a fact or two.

Darwin (via OSX) has actually achieved UNIX certification. IT IS UNIX.

Linux NEVER has achieved UNIX certification. IT IS NOT UNIX.

And the fact that you're talking about Filesystem layout ... in comparison to Linux ... is absolutely fucking mind numbing. The stupidity of the Linux filesystem layout is good reason not to use it.

Anything that isn't GPL and Linux is evil around here.

Sure, plenty of people don't feel that way, but the majority of slashdot does.

No reason to turn it off, just right click on the app and select open to override, in the default Gatekeeper configuration. Once you do it once, the App is authorized to be run again in the future as long as its on an OSX compatible filesystem. It has to be able to flag the app as allowed, which works fine for me over AFS to a FreeBSD ZFS pool, others may work differently, I've not used anything else.

Just to be clear, I am most certainly a Steve Jobs fan. I find his life quite impressive and accomplished, even though most think he was a complete asshole I feel he just had high standards. Please don't write off what I have to say because of that.

Your interpretation leaves out the fact that he was dying of cancer and had organ replacement, which more than qualified him for a handicap placard, though I can't say he went through the effort of getting one. He could have EASILY bought one from a doctor somewhere even if he was perfectly health with the amount of money he had, so really you're just being pedantic.

It takes FAR less to qualify for a handicap placard in the states I've lived in. I don't know anything about the matter in California.

He donated millions to charities for people with AIDS and HIV ... many of which, once they reach a certain stage of sickness ... are also more than qualified to obtain a handicap placard. Does that qualify for you?

Its fine if you don't like him, but lets be real. There are plenty of reasons for people to dislike him, the biggest being his lack of empathy for underachievers, but if you're going to find things to attack him on, pick things he was ACTUALLY a dick about.