Not the paycheck. But the access to people's valuables, and their junk.

> If not, then put up with it. It's an extra what, two minutes? Suck it up for freedom.

Mr. TSA agent, that is not a bomb. Yes, it's hard. And it might go off. But it's not a bomb.

While encrypted psuedo random is a more complex function, it is still PSUEDO random not real random. Future output is a function (now a more complex function) of past output.

Not only the secret key must be kept secret, but the seed (either current or original) must be kept secret.

If the attacker knows the algorithm, which they might, then they may be able to analyze the output. If they know the seed, then the problem becomes one of a known-plaintext attack upon the encryption algorithm. If they know the encryption key, it becomes a matter of finding a seed that generates some known pre-encryption output of the psuedo random algorithm.

We could go back and forth about the practicality and difficulty of such attacks. But switching from psuedo to true random eliminates that entire discussion.

Your $10 webcam + lens cap is a good idea BTW. Or other similar ideas of using various sensors to capture random noise. Just hope the noise really is random. Also, a $10 webcam without a lens cap, pointed at something, like a busy street, might also be a source of randomness in the pixel data.

How about a bunch of dice in a box with a shaker, a camera, and purpose built OCR software to identify the numbers on the dice.

Instead of a dice, one could use a coin. Now generate me a 4096 bit random number. :-)

Oh, you did say computers needed special hardware in order to not be psuedorandom.

We suspect the cookie jar was robbed. I think Joe put his hand in the cookie jar. Five total people including Joe had access to the cookie jar. The other four will testify, pass a polygraph, psychic mumbo jumbo, whatever, that they did not put their hand into the cookie jar. Thus, it MUST have been Joe!

If physicians have to keep updating the patient's age, then something is wrong. But good news! We have these new fangled things called computers! These computers can calculate the patient's age on the screen at the time the record was entered (by doing this patented new thing called date subtraction to get number of days and thus the age!).

Did they have the latest version of French Maginot Line Defender installed to protect them from such attacks?

Who wants to download buggy, ugly, insecure stuff? And that's just the OS....?

MBA drones.

Only if it has pretty graphics.

Get them to use it under a true open source license, and then sue them for patent infringement! It may turn out to be a growth industry, or at the very least a new business model for some. But one would have to choose an open source license that doesn't deal with the subject of patents.

Some things in Windows would not be portable, but could be ported. Some (not me) would say that it would be a great advancement for humanity if all platforms could run IE 6 and ActiveX.

Cancer is Microsoft's term for it. Intended to have negative meaning.

If you are in favor of open source it would be better to use a different word or phrase. Basically the GPL spreads freedom.

Laughter is contagious (a negative term). So maybe we should say laughter is a cancer? It is unfortunate that there are not more positive terms for things that spread and the ones we tend to fall back on are biological terms that have undesirable meanings: infectious, contagious, cancer, etc. Freedom is contagious -- when people don't have it and see it, they want it for themselves.

If management trusts the person, and he is leaving on good terms, then you don't need to do anything unless directed to do so.

You could make sure you have plenty of backups. But you should already have them.

> NSA doesn't spy on nerds, they care about the real world, not Minecraft.

So you mean World of Warcraft?

Unfortunately, whether or not code is encumbered by patents is not up to the author of the code. That is one (of many) major FAIL of the patent system. Your code, yes yours, could be encumbered by some pending patent, that the 'inventor' is keeping from being issued until your code is suddenly making money. Poof! Patent is now granted and you are infringing.

> Code needs to fail in an easy to understand and predictable way.

Being written in C++ is a sure way to guarantee both!

Did it fail in an easy to understand way? Yes. It is easy to understand that it failed because it was written in C++.

Was it predictable that it would fail? Again, yes.

:-)



Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to be promoted to a decision making role.