Liudvikas Bukys

Vianney (IBM): Hyper-Threading speeds Linux: Multiprocessor performance on a single processor The results on Linux kernel 2.4.19 show Hyper-Threading technology could improve multithreaded applications by 30%. Current work on Linux kernel 2.5.32 may provide performance speed-up as much as 51%.

Schoon, Rees, Jezierski (Microsoft): Designing Application-Managed Authorization

IDC on IBM: Business Transformation Through End-to-End Integration

Gary North, via Jude Wanniski: The World We Are Losing

During World War II, the British cracked the Germans’ military code. The Brits knew the times and routes of the oil tankers that were to supply Rommel’s forces in Africa. To keep the Germans from figuring out that their code had been broken, the British would send a reconnaissance plane, which would make itself visible to the men on the tankers, and then run for cover. The plane would send a message announcing the whereabouts of the tanker. The Germans on the tanker would conclude that they had been spotted from the air. What bad luck! If they radioed home, they would tell the command that they had been spotted. Then a British submarine would sink the tanker. The Germans never did alter the code.

The reconnaissance plane was part of the deception. So are the random searches of passengers and bags. They are to provide camouflage: (1) from voters who demand action; (2) from lawyers who might otherwise get their swarthy clients released on the basis of racial profiling. Anyone who really expects searches like these to protect airliners is so abysmally dense that he might as [well] be a Congressman. The other purposes of the new surveillance system relate more to controlling average people than catching terrorists.

Bob Toxen: Linux Security: Reflections on 2002 “ The current interest of everyone and his brother in forensics and honeypots will die down. For other than those doing serious research in computer security, I find its only value is demonstrating to management that insecure systems will be breached. ”

History: A Study of the ARPANET TCP/IP Digest and of the Role of Online Communication in the Transition from the ARPANET to the Internet (Ronda Hauben, Columbia University)