[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > Why is peoples' first reaction to criticize and decry new technology > when we should be cheering and encouraging the pioneering of > new ideas? > The security industry, in particular, is full of vendors of "snake oil": products that *claim* great security, but when asked for evidence that the product is as secure as claimed, the "evidence" offered amounts to emphatic assertion :)
This is not to suggest that security geeks are chronic liars; rather, it is because actually showing security is very, very hard. To show that a product works, you only have to show that it does what it is supposed to do, i.e. test it. To show that a product is *secure*, you have to show that it does *nothing else*, and that is very difficult. > I searched out one of the patents filed by D-Wave on Google and > although I do not pretend to know any of what is being written in > the filing, I presume the "claims" were substantiated enough to > pass muster with PTO. > You presume incorrectly. The PTO does not verify anything in the claims. Mostly they search prior art, and they only search the prior patents, not the literature. Consider this patent for a wake up call on the validity of granted patents. It patents the "method of exercising a cat" using a laser pointer. Yes, that's absurd. The author undoubtedly filed the patent to demonstrate the absurdity of our patent process http://www.freepatentsonline.com/5443036.html Caveat: None of my comments should be considered to pertain particularly to D-Wave. I have no direct knowledge of them or their technologies. Crispin -- Crispin Cowan, Ph.D. http://crispincowan.com/~crispin/ Director of Software Engineering http://novell.com AppArmor Training at CanSec West http://cansecwest.com/dojoapparmor.html _______________________________________________ FDE mailing list [email protected] http://www.xml-dev.com/mailman/listinfo/fde
