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Cryptography for Dummies

Or he might do well with this book on security through obscurity:

Physics for Dummies

Hard to say from your question

You're too kind - it's of course pretty obvious that the submitter is trying to write a cryptosystem and hasn't even gotten around to reading (and comprehending) Applied Cryptography. That's the link to the used page with $11 options, submitter. Curl up with it for a couple months' of night reading.

Was the book called Hello World?

You can get a 32GB MicroSD card, which has a volume of of (15 mm) * (11 mm) * (1 mm) = 0.165cc, yielding a storage/volume of 32GB/0.165cc ~= 194 GB/cc. A 3TB HDD has (roughly) a volume of 102 mm * 25.4 mm * 3.5 in ~= 230cc. This yields a density of 3TB/230cc ~= 13 GB/cc.

Looks like SSD is roughly 15 times denser than a conventional 3.5" drive. Seems to me it's SSD's scalability that needs work -- not the physical density.

Do you mean this?

http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-7-Inch-UMPC-with-Touchscreen/dp/B001TZVW8E 1 new from $835.18

That's not the same product, that's a winxp thing with a hard drive.

It's bad form to reply to myself but I recommend the ProAna glasses. After doing research I found that these were on the higher end of the quality list.

Alice is a pretty simple way to introduce newbies to game/3D-environment development. I used to use it in an introductory programming class and the kids loved it. Gives you a real sense for how game development and programming work without being heavy-handed about it (or requiring students to jump right into hand-coding, without so much as flowers and dinner first). Here is the text I used for the course.

This is not to say that engineers are always creationists, of course - it's just that whenever you get a creationist who claims to have a degree in something scientific, it's always a degree in engineering.

Counter-example: Michael Behe, who, IIRC, has a degree in molecular biology.

Speaking of Amazon reviews, nothing beats this. They should publish the collection in a book.

Or Ringworld.

The thing is, most of the Halo novels don't focus on the titualar "Halo" orbital.

I can imagine my phone ringing and saying,

Speaking of rings, this is old tech, which you can pick up for a pittance.

Ah the 70s...

How much does it cost to buy something like CrossOver vs. just having your PC builder buy Windows Home Premium (OEM version) and install it alongside Ubuntu?

CrossOver Standard costs $40 and CrossOver Professional $60. If you have an older PC them you have to pay more for Windows, not less. Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium Upgrade, if you're running XP or Vista, costs more than $100. And unless the hardware already meets Windows 7's requirements it will have to upgraded as well.

Of course Ubuntu can be installed alongside Windows, but then when switching between OSes you have to shutdown and reboot. Unless a VM is used, but then more hardware is needed to get the same performance.

In some cases using CrossOver to run Windows apps will be better than dualbooting. And in others it will be better to dualboot.

Falcon

Ahem, Scourge of Worlds - A Dungeons & Dragons Adventure (2003) would like a word here.

http://www.amazon.com/Scourge-Worlds-Dungeons-Dragons-Adventure/dp/B00009KU8L

From the description: Scourge of Worlds: A Dungeons and Dragons Adventure is not a film sequel to Dungeons and Dragons (2000), but the DVD equivalent of an interactive role-playing novel. There are over 900 short digitally animated sequences, leading every so often to a choice to be made with the remote control, resulting after about 90 minutes in one of four possible endings.

Sorry IBM, your prior art is sitting in a card board box in my basement.

Per Amazon:

Corn Sugar is the common name for dextrose.

and per Wise Geek

Corn sugar is a natural sweetener that is made utilizing starch that is extracted from kernels of corn. The extracted cornstarch is then refined to create a solid sugar or to make another popular sweetening agent known as corn syrup...

The process for making corn sugar begins with the removal of starchy elements from the corn. The extracted elements are actually glucose, although the refining process will transform them into another form of sugar known as dextrose. With the production of syrup, the corn sugar becomes a high fructose corn syrup...

It sounds like "corn sugar" is already used to refer to a separate product. If they don't want to continue using "HFCS," then come up with another word, the same way they did with "Tilapia."

But I think they're shooting themselves in the foot. I mean, are they trying to give ammunition to the healthier foods? First, the other projects can continue to claim that they don't contain HFCS, and they can also make fun of the other brands for trying to hide what's in their foods.

I mean, it's going to be like a fucking field day for the health foods.

If you want to read a big-overview-of-all-physics book like this, except from a non-crackpot, consider Roger Penrose's The Road to Reality .

I am not a scientist, have not read the 3 volumes, can not speak for the validity of the material, I have no affiliation with any one involved with the book, and agree the original "review" may not be completely sincere...

But having others being critical of it without having read the book is in my mind just wrong. That's whats wrong with the world now a days..people make knee jerk responses without having the whole story.

For those questioning the religious aspects...His blog comment indicates "I don’t know about God using me in the last days? But I can see his handiwork in the universe through the math and physics; and would like to share that vision with others. However, the Super Principia Mathematica is not a religious treatise. There is nothing religious in the Super Principia, except for the Prologue.". I suspect anything beyond that and he is trying to leverage off of Hawking's recent publication.

The book site has excerpts available. The material seems to have some relevant references from history for foundation as well as bleeding edge science as well. Programs I've seen on the Science Channel seems to have similar topics that he covers. So there may be some merit there.

He worked on the Moller Flying Car and at JPL. I would hope that gets him a little credit.

It would be very hard to play with the strings in the wrong order, but I guess theoretically it would be possible.

If you did that, you'd sound like Dick Dale. Well, that and a hell of a lot of practice.

Anyone else immediately flash to Whitehead and Russell's Principia Mathematica?

Of course. But Principia Mathematic isn't about physics; it's a development of mathematics from minimal axioms, step by step.

The modern version of that is A Computational Logic, by Boyer and Moore. This is a theorem prover which starts from a minimal set of axioms and, when fed the right theorems to prove in the right order, builds up number theory and set theory from a cold start, using only constructive mathematics.

Actually, it seems the review is just copy-pasted from the only Amazon review of it. The reviewer appears to be a shill, as they have done 90 reviews, all of which are 4 or 5 stars, and all of them are as absurdly effusive as this one.

C'mon samzenpus, you can do better than this...

Who are "They"?

Some of them are actually in it for the money. On the level of individual bahavior, Barksdale's stupid antics don't rise much above a creepy misdemeanor. On the level of a business with its own money, a blank check from the government, and a direct profit interest in violation of privacy, it gets very scary. recommended reading: http://www.amazon.com/No-Place-Hide-Emerging-Surveillance/dp/0743254805

This is apropos because the Pennsylvania State Police began in the early 19th century as the private Iron and Coal Police of the mine and mill owners. The owners tired of paying for their muscle all by themselves and recruited the taxpayers of Pennsylvania to chip in by getting the State of Pennsylvania to ... what's the opposite of "privatize"? Publicize? Anyway, the State adopted the bosses' private security apparatus as a whole, changed its name to the State Police, and started to pay their salaries to do what they had been doing anyway: fighting the unions and communities that were struggling to improve wages and working conditions in the coal mines and steel mills of Pennsylvania.

This is all detailed in Kristian Williams's excellent history of the police in America Our Enemies in Blue .

The Sharp Mobilon TriPad PV-6000 from more than a decade ago had a similar form factor. It ran Windows CE and had 16 MB of RAM.

http://www.amazon.com/Sharp-Mobilon-TriPad-PV-6000-Handheld/dp/B00000J1AG

So let me get this straight. Because you were a Marine, that automatically means your opinion is "correct" and mine is "wrong"?

He's simply stating his background and what is influencing his opinion. He's letting you know that he does "realize how good we actually have it" and that he's proud to have served his country which lets us have it good. Your dismissal of his opinion, without actually taking the time to understand it is what is "wrong." Read on.

Was I wrong in stating that you mentioned flag burning as a legal form of free speech, immediately after citing our lack of free speech in America?

You missed the entire point. The point is, that "Burn a flag, protest, do whatever" is at the, historically controversial, extreme. Name calling is typically not considered to be something that stretches your rights. As such, it doesn't deserve the extreme of being banned from the USA.

The way I read it is that he doesn't feel that the banning a teen from the US is warranted. He points to the inconsistency of allowing more extreme behavior but not allowing much more moderate and commonly tolerated behavior. It's "weird" as he describes it.

Your statement that most Americans not knowing how good they have it might be overwhelmingly true, but it is only loosely connected to the post you originally responded to. He never said that Americans had it bad. That's something you spontaneously injected into the conversation.

Fred: French fries taste good. :) :)
Joe: Oranges are high in Vitamin C. You clearly undervalue good nutrition!!!!!! >:\
Fred: I... I eat oranges too. :|
Joe: Was I wrong to point out that oranges are high in vitamin C!!!!???? No.
Fred: I didn't mean to...
Joe: How can you even question oranges as a source of vitamin C!!!

Of course Fred can't counter the well known fact that oranges are a decent source of vitamin C. Joe walks away feeling accomplished, for "winning" the argument. Everyone else thinks Joe is an ass. Both Fred and Joe were right. Joe, however, created a situation for the express purpose of trampling Joe. This makes Joe feel strong because once again his rightness was reaffirmed.

I recommend Fred reads Coping with Difficult People.

>so you're going to have to make allowances for electronic devices like dictionaries if you ban electronics from testing sites.
No you don't.

Ever hear of a paper dictionary? That's what we used back in the stone age. You can still buy them. You allow electronic dictionaries, the students will find a way to hide ways to cheat in them. When I was in college there were no electronic dictionaries. You used a book.

http://www.amazon.com/Berlitz-Korean-Dictionary-Korean-English-English-Korean/dp/9812680217/ref=pd_cp_b_1

I've not personally observed Wal-Mart raising their prices after driving the competition away

Just wait until they actually drive away their competition. They're general retail; wait until there's no other retailers.

Then when prices are jacked up, there's an opportunity for competition driving prices down again. I don't know of a place that has a Walmart but not a Target, a Sam's Club but not a Costco. There's Aldi and Amazon too. Last week I bought an item from a local store but after seeing Amazon selling it a lot cheaper, with "free shipping", I returned it.

Falcon

The problem is that the SSN is so closely tagged to everything you do, just knowing it makes stealing an identity way too easy.

I'm not positive that's the problem -- as turbidostato pointed out, it's supposed to be an identification token, not a password. Trouble is, banks, CC companies, etc. commonly use this (perhaps coupled with something lame like DOB) as just that.

For example, from your clearly visible email address, I know you have a livejournal account (contains your birthdate, hometown, full name, etc.), you frequent Amazon (which shows a picture of you, some personal info, etc.), and so forth -- all from a simple google search.

Thing is, I can't easily steal your identity, because you've only supplied your handle, but no password. I believe that's what turbidostato's saying; we should be able to talk about our SSN the same as our email address, as our handle and password should be (but aren't) separate.

Besides Standard Oil, General Motors, and of course IBM (too lazy to bother, see the 2001 book IBM and the Holocaust?

I don't think any US based facilities of GM, and the Seven Sisters from the Standard Oil breakup, were taken by gun point. I also don't know if any US firearm and other weapon manufacturers supplied the Nazi Germany.

I'm not trying to vilify USA during this time period, many countries and companies made some embarrassingly cruel political and economic decisions. Germany was not alone in its anti-Semitism.

but two wrights can find a wong

This is why some devices have a 'no rechargeable batteries' warning - nicads and li-ions have lower internal resistance than the common zinc-carbon or alkaline, so they can burn out LEDs even though they have a slightly lower cell voltage.

How about the opposite warning? I bought one of these a while back...it's a couple of Li-ion CR123A cells with a charger. The package says not to use them in flashlights, but I've used them in an LED flashlight for several months with no issues. Is there some reason they'd recommend against using them in flashlights?

uh... so I turn it on its side, what did that gain me exactly?

Its a cube. It is also taller than many other components in most TV stands which are modeled to hold dvd players; most are slim; and receivers/av which stack nicely with other components.

This device is just odd for odd's sake. At least the new Apple TV is black meaning I no longer have to work to hide it, it blends now.

There just is no point in making this device in the shape it is. Its more gimmick than anything else.

Oh, Amazon sells it for $199 and has the dimensions and pictures

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0038JE07O

If they had kept the price under 200$

But they did - as of now it's listed at $199 w/free shipping, and an HDMI cable thrown in too.

Yeah, I noticed my homophone slip up the instant I hit submit but by then it was too late.

As for the remote, would something like this work? I realize it's branded for Vista but I would think the drivers for a PC remote would be standardized by now. It's not Bluetooth but it is RF so you shouldn't need line of sight, I imagine there are similar solutions using RF out there, that's just the first one I found.

I use the EGreat M34A Networked Media Tank:

http://www.amazon.com/Egreat-EG-M34A-Network-Media-Tank/dp/B002IRBKOS

I just picked up my third one on E-Bay, where they are a bit cheaper.

Myself, I'm still upset at the devastation that that upstart Gutenberg caused to Medieval Mnemonics!

Try looking at General Relativity a bit more closely. Results are the same either way.

You are mistaken. Translation is relative, but rotation is not. Rotation us absolute and measurable.

There is for example the Sagnac effect used in some inertial navigation systems. A laser is placed in a ring with light circling in both directions. The laser will lock on a reinforcing frequency where the light takes an integer number of wavelengths around the ring. After making a loop around the ring there is constructive interference as the standing wave overlaps itself. The light going around in both directions will have the same frequency and wavelength. Now lets give the ring some rotation. The light going around in opposite directions need to cover different distances around the ring to return to the laser which that has advanced during the that time. The wavelength of the light in one direction must increase and the wavelength of the light in the other direction must decrease in order to maintain the integer-number-of-wavelengths constructive interference.

If the ring is not rotating then the light going in the two directions locks at the identical frequency. If the ring is rotating then there will be a difference between the two frequencies, and that difference is exactly proportional to the rate of rotation.

This is not merely theoretical, it is the actual foundation of existing navigation systems.

Rotating reference frames are currently a bit of a mess in General Relativity. There isn't a single well defined way to define simultaneous time across a rotating disk, leaving no single well defined measure of length either. If you Google relativity rotating frames the top result is a $360 book on the multitude of often contradictory models attempting to define rotating reference frames in General Relativity.

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You're description of debt is incredibly small minded. Ever heard the expression: "If you owe the bank $100, the bank owns you. If you owe the bank $100,000,000, you own the bank."? It's essentially true. Right now and in the mid-term, we have China over a barrel because of how much we owe them, in dollar denominated debt. They can't stop lending to us or the renminbi appreciates against the dollar they lose economic competitiveness while we gain it (same thing with the Euro, since Germany is also an export economy). Why did Wall Street get bailed out without the bond holders taking a haircut? Because the bond-holders generally are pension funds (public and private), large mutual funds etc. i.e: the retirement funds for the middle-class. Wall street has Main street over the barrel in exactly the same way: once you lend too much, you lose control of the borrower.

Debt is certainly a domestic problem in the US, in the sense that until mortgage debt overhang in particular diminishes there won't be a robust upswing in demand. But US sovereign debt level is not going to be a problem for a long time, if ever. About the most realistic (e.g. considers the macro effects, financial system stability, currency and capital flow issues) estimate I've seen comes from Harold James' book, and boils down to many decades in the worst case. As such, it would be a smart idea to alleviate the domestic personal debt problem by transferring it into sovereign debt, to get demand and economic growth and employment back on track. But unfortunately the debate is dominated in Washington by people who can't understand debt beyond of the context of their credit card and/or are more concerned about moralizing the personal responsibility to repay than they are with fixing the economy.

Reading 1984 and Animal Farm can be misleading if you don't understand that Orwell was, himself, a socialist. Read, for instance, Homage to Catalonia, Orwell's account of his time as a volunteer in a revolutionary socialist militia in Spain, and the way that they were attacked by the Communist Party.

1. WePay

2. Google Checkout

3. Amazon Payment

payments.amazon.com

Digital copies of books are cheaper than physical ones? The truth of that is declining every day.

Here, look at this:

http://www.amazon.com/Changes-Novel-Dresden-Files-ebook/dp/B0030DHPAW/ref=pd_sim_kinc_7?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2

The kindle edition is $12.99, price set by publisher.
The paperback edition is $9.99, price set by publisher.

That's right the publisher, in this case Penguin, has decided that the digital version should be MORE expensive than the the dead tree version. This is becoming more common as time goes on. I put the blame for this squarely on Apple and the iPad. If you don't know why then go look it up.

They have wireless monitors(power cord required, of course). But it is a wireless implementation of the USB->monitor dongle, so you only get to pick two of [FPS, resolution, color depth], plus it is over $100 for just the adapters.

http://www.amazon.com/Cables-Go-29572-TruLink-Wireless/dp/B001JEPC40

I understood what you were saying, which is why I think you're retarded. There is no manufacturer anywhere in the world that is expected to "make an effort to restrict their audience to the technically skilled". Your blind hatred of MS and your petulant demands are completely irrelevant, since you've demonstrated absolutely no reason why such an exception should be made.

I'm sorry that you found my previous comment offensive - I was merely trying to be helpful. Perhaps the product I linked to required too much "technical proficiency" for your taste - let me try again.

When Microsoft touts the "Ease of Use" of their product, clearly they're speaking to the portion of the population with an IQ higher than room temperature. Apparently you're not part of their target demographic. May I offer an alternative?

You're certainly a single-minded one. The subtle disapproval of how I express myself was recognized and rejected so you decided you'd just try harder with a more blatant form of making this personal. Trying to insult me is a sorry substitute for arguing against my position. You can't make me deviate from my position no matter how hard you try to make this personal.

Most users of Windows are not technically skilled and there's no way that Microsoft doesn't know this. When they tout "ease of use" they are not making an effort to restrict their audience to the technically skilled. When the unskilled purchase Windows, their money is just as green as the skilled users' money. That's why Microsoft likes this arrangement and has no interest in limiting it.

I want Microsoft to either clearly state that their products are not intended for the technically unskilled or take on the liability for suffering caused by ignorant users who buy into their hype about security and ease-of-use. All of the childishness and belligerence you can possibly summon won't alter this logic. Now, if you have what it takes, then either demonstrate with solid reasoning why my logic is faulty or admit that you cannot.

When Microsoft touts the "Ease of Use" of their product, clearly they're speaking to the portion of the population with an IQ higher than room temperature. Apparently you're not part of their target demographic. May I offer an alternative?

My wife got me Good Eats: The Early Years for Christmas, and I was really surprised that it's worth having. I watch the show, obviously, but I figured just getting the recipes online was sufficient. There are extra "knowledge concentrate" sections along with the recipes that help you understand the 'why' better than the show. I suspect they are leavings from the first pass of the scripts which got ultimately cut, but it's worth having the books for those. Also, some of the recipes are updated from the shows. The ladies all raved over the brownies at a Girl Scouts even I went to, but, word to the wise, they're the most involved brownie recipe you'll ever attempt (compare with the Kraft 1-bowl recipe, e.g.).

The only reason they are doing this now is because they've gotten too much pressure not too.

Naw, the iPhone is, literally, the textbook example from The Innovator's Solution.

Apple's best profit maximization came from keeping everything proprietary for as long as they didn't have significant competition. That they're doing this is likely an indication of a sales slump vs. competition from Android. Now they'll begin the process of competing in a commoditized market.

So tell me again why learning empathy, understanding how to infer things, picking up on and interpreting nonverbal cues, and so on aren't skills that can be taught in books where "Implied inferences rule"?

Perhaps because such a book would be called a movie? The book is limited to direct and indirect verbal communication. That Martin can steal a look at Kate, and you can do your best to write about it, but it will never be the same as seeing it, or being part of the live scene. Books work the best when the reader is sufficiently associating himself with the act. I can write a book about trepnung of amilatsies on the 5th planet of Proxima Centauri, but you will not get any entertainment or social skills from reading it - it would be meaningless (unless you an amilatsi yourself :-)

The post I was responding to was saying, "Don't read Shakespeare, learn how to be a better mechanic"

Those Slashdot comments, they tend to branch and the discussion sometimes flows in all directions. I do not support the theory of "skipping things that are "non-essential" to the trade we've decided a kid has the most aptitude for" for many obvious reasons. But sometimes that "not skipping" transforms into "force-feeding", and that is bad, IMO. My opinion is based on my own experiences, and I do not pretend to speak for everyone. But I'm sure I'm not alone in the world with such an opinion.

Sure, they may still need guidance, but a 15, 16, 17, 18 year old high schooler is capable of handling "difficult" topics

I was 16 when I graduated from high school (after 10 years there, 8+2.) When I was 18 I was in a university already, pretty well understanding [at that time] technical electrodynamics and some quantum effects within certain microwave devices. I simply don't comprehend why in the USA anyone is still in school after 16. But sure, if you keep your "children" in school until their beards turn grey then indeed they can be taught a lot.

That reminds me of a good scene in one book, where 35 years old children petition for their emancipation.

Shit, 5 year olds play cops and robbers all the time, and invent all kinds of imaginary games and scenarios.

They certainly do that; however nobody judges them on accuracy of their act. Literature studies do.

It's called imagination, or empathy. You may not get it right, but you'd be surprised at how much a student *can* get right.

These are not qualities that all people are equally and plentifully endowed with. Kirk and Spock, for example. You, when in school, may be able to jump over a plank at 10 feet, but I can't jump over anything. However I can devise a complicated Rube Goldberg machine to raise me over Mount Everest if I want to. People are different, and it hurts when a teacher tries to hammer a square peg into a round hole.

Forcing a child to not study something is just as bad as forcing him to study it. Traditionally it was one of teacher's responsibilities to discover what the child has leaning toward. But the 20th century adopted the conveyor belt education system. Teachers are just operators who speak their part, verify responses against the government-approved standard, and calculate scores. You can't sing? "YOU VILL SING, WE WILL MAKE YOU." You can't catch a ball? FAIL. You can shoot a fly at 50 yards with a .22LR? OMG, VERBOTEN!!1! I'm not sure if such an educational machine is much better than the one you warn against.

I've seen 'em too. They all suck.

Don't believe me? Read this, this and this. Enjoy.

Please see my other comments to this article on the need for fundamental paradigm change. Better learning materials (while a nice thing) won't fix the overall problems that people like John Taylor Gatto or John Holt have written about. Schools as they are seem very good at subverting good content (see the history of Lego/Logo), which is part of why they so naturally take potentially liberating computers and turn them into surveillance systems...
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/07/webcam-spy-scandal-broadens/

Still, I agree with you that more open source text books and other materials would be a good thing.

But see also:
"Weapons of Mass Instruction: A Schoolteacher's Journey through the Dark World of Compulsory Schooling" by John Taylor Gatto
http://www.amazon.com/Weapons-Mass-Instruction-Schoolteachers-Compulsory/dp/0865716315

Or "The War on Kids":
http://www.thewaronkids.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nlnwm11d6II

Until schools lose the compulsion and become more a mix of all-age learning community (more like public libraries and craft centers) they will have deep, deep problems as far as what we need to have a healthy democracy...

IMO the ultimate geek book on this topic is On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen, by McGee.