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Is the DEA Lying About iMessage Security? 195

Posted by timothy
from the please-see-previous-department-line dept.
First time accepted submitter snobody writes "Recently, an article was posted on Slashdot about the claim that law enforcement made about being frustrated by their inability to decrypt messages using Apple's iMessage. However, this article on Techdirt suggests that the DEA may be spewing out disinformation. As the Techdirt article says, if you switch to a new iDevice, you still are able to access your old iMessages, suggesting that Apple has the key somewhere in the cloud. Thus, if law enforcement goes directly to Apple, they should be able to get the key."

Comment: Re:OSX is doing great (Score 2) 91

by SigmundFloyd (#42920695) Attached to: The State of BSD At the Start of 2013

You have it wrong. The file system is not really case-insensitive as per the traditional sense. If you have a file named "SomeFile.pdf" and try to open "SomeFile.Pdf" it will fail. The case is sensitive just as with the other Unix based operating systems. Where it differs is that it will not allow you have files named "Readme" and "readme" in the same location.


> ls dir2
README
> mv dir1/readme dir2/
> ls dir2
readme

Bye-bye README! Because of this nonstandard behaviour, I once lost a bunch of files. Thankfully, I realized soon enough and I had backups; but - since then - I know I can't trust shell scripts known to work on other Unixes.

Comment: Re:OSX is doing great (Score 2) 91

by SigmundFloyd (#42918933) Attached to: The State of BSD At the Start of 2013

sudo /usr/libexec/locate.updatedb

It's not that. I've updated the db (and I let update it periodically, via launchd) but it still won't find everything (not even regular user-owned stuff).

man CpMac

Yeah, I had come across that one. Then again, you first have to know it exists. Apple won't warn you nor inform you. And when you investigate and find out, it's usually because the regular Unix tools have already wrought havoc.

It's a case-preserving filesystem by default. Because it's a Mac and needs backward-compatibility.

Whatever. Have fun developing on a case-insensitive file system and not noticing case mismatches that will suddenly stop the show when you run your stuff on a proper Unix.

http://menphix.wordpress.com/2010/04/24/how-to-use-cron-in-mac-os-x/

That won't work, from at least 10.6 onwards. No cron by default. If you want it, you must use it in addition to launchd. If you want to start cron at boot, you have to tell launchd, by writing freaking XML!

Sounds to me like you don't like it because it's different from what you're used to and you don't know what you're doing because you didn't RTFM.

I don't like because it's a bastardized Unix that's not nearly Unix-like enough.

Comment: Re:OSX is doing great (Score 4, Informative) 91

by SigmundFloyd (#42918455) Attached to: The State of BSD At the Start of 2013

OS X is more than FreeBSD it's UNIX(tm).

OSX may have been certified as Unix, but it has been diverging from its ancestor so much that it no longer feels Unix-like in the least.

Some examples:

- no /dev (bye-bye Unix philosophy cornerstone "everything is a file");
- unusable "locate" that doesn't find all the stuff it should (because Apple wants you to use Spotlight, the command line is bad, you silly!);
- much of the userland isn't aware of the HFS+ filesystem extensions (have fun cp'ing files, discovering months later that - oops! - the stuff had a resource fork and is now unusable -- verrry dependable!);
- case insensitive filesystem by default, you could switch to case sensitive for compatibility with any other Unix in the universe (have fun reformatting and reinstalling) but - alas! - important application software won't support it (photoshop & others);
- no cron! If you want to get it to do things periodically, you either gotta write freaking XML for launchd, or run Vixie Cron in addition to launchd. No thanks!

If OSX is Unix, it's the worst Unix I've ever seen. No serious command line nerd could ever like it (OTOH, it's perfect for know-nothings who like to click on pretty pictures). Using it is a totally different (as in "worse") experience than using any BSD (or Linux!), so spare me the old "OSX is BSD" hearsay!

Comment: Re:What exact problem is this trying to solve? (Score 1) 311

by SigmundFloyd (#42839565) Attached to: Moving the Linux Kernel Console To User-Space

Being able to set a keyboard mapping is the minimum I'd expect even from an emergency recovery console in 2013.

I've been doing that for years before 2013. Not to mention:

  1. - exchanging the caps-lock and escape keys;
  2. - setting up the console to use UTF-8 to get all the accented characters I'll ever need, plus the Euro sign;
  3. - setting up "dead" keys to accent/modify the next typed character;
  4. - setting up a "combination" key to join the next 2 typed characters into a single approximation;
  5. - using the very nice Terminus bitmap font in place of the default VGA font;
  6. - setting up the colors for green on black (or yellow on black, or white on blue, or...);
  7. - using a blinking block cursor instead of the default blinking underscore.

The Linux console has been doing all of the above (and more) for years. Remember, kids: Real geeks read the docs!

Security

+ - Bad grammar make good password, research say

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes "NewScientist reports, "Along with birthdays, names of pets and ascending number sequences, add one more thing to the list of password no-nos: good grammar..." Researchers from Carnegie Mellon University seem to have developed a password cracking algorithm that targets grammatically correct passwords. Can bad grammar really make your password secure? This topic received attention in the media in UK and India recently..."

+ - Computer-designed enzymes may help alleviate celiac disease->

Submitted by tbg58
tbg58 writes "Computational protein design tools have allowed researchers to create enzymes that perform functions unknown in nature. Researchers have applied the technique to develop an enzyme specifically aimed at neutralizing the peptide alpha-gliadin contained in gluten, which triggers the autoimmune attack that causes celiac disease. The design of -Gliadin Endopeptidase began with the search for a naturally occurring endopeptidase with stability in an acidic-pH environment, the reproducing and modifying the naturally occurring enzyme to have the specific structure of the designer enzyme using recombinant-DNA modified strain of e. coli.

This development is only made possible by computational cataloguing and modeling of enzymes. The resulting enzyme, given the name KumaMax, shows eventual promise as an oral enzyme therapy for celiac disease taken prior to the ingestion of gluten-containing foods. It is attractive as a non-invasive oral therapeutic which can break down over 95% of the immunogenic peptide under physiologically relevant conditions."

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