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Resilient sure, but collisions can still occur with any hash, no matter that the possibility is extremley remote. There's already a flawless way to see if two files match - diff. MD5s should be used to streamline the investigative process, not as a proof of guilt.

Oh, and some disagree with your analysis.

In addition, the 128-bit output is arguably not long enough to make generating collisions using a birthday attack infeasible.

Another post in this thread also noted that you can generate a collision with identically sized files.

Something like this? I think something similar still operates in France and maybe Switzerland - I've seen trains full of HGV's there.

* Smart searches. The first intelligent agent software packages will emerge, allowing Net users to ask for a specific piece of information like "What is the population of Fiji?" or "How far is Saturn from the Sun?" An agent will go out on the Net , find the information, and return it without the user knowing the source.

1st results from Google:

• What is the population of Fiji?
  Fiji -- Population: 905,949 (July 2006 Est.)
  https://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbo ok/print/fj.html
• How far is Saturn from the Sun?
  Saturn -- Distance From the Sun: Mean: 1427 million KM (9.539 au.) Max: 1507 million KM (10.069 au.) Min: 1347 KM (9.008 au.)
  According to http://www.users.zetnet.co.uk/pete/ Saturn.htm

73 mph winds are nothing? Is that why "mere" 55-63 mph winds "uproot trees" and "cause considerable structural damage? New Orleans experienced 140 mph winds.
Flooding indeed caused the most destruction in New Orleans, because much of the city is below sea level and because the levees broke. But they broke because of the strain from the rain and winds and storm surge. Caused by being hit by a hurricane.
Cloud cover for Katrina was as large as Mississippi and Alabama combined, and there was a lot of rain in all of that. A direct result is flooding, which is just as much a part of the hurricane as the storm center.
Several of your points about the flooding are mostly fine, it just really bugs me that an "Interesting" and "Insightful" comment begins with "New Orleans wasn't hit by a hurricane"--that simply is not true.

From this page

MD4:
[I]t has been shown that collisions for MD4 can be found in about a minute on a typical PC. [...] MD4 [...] should not be used.

MD5:
Given the surprising speed with which techniques on MD4 were extended to MD5 we feel that it is only prudent to draw a cautious conclusion and to expect that collisions for the entire hash function might soon be found.

In addition, the 128-bit output is arguably not long enough to make generating collisions using a birthday attack infeasible.

I couldn't find an example of actually broken MD5, but it seems like it's simply a matter of time. Considering the value of what could ride on it, it doesn't seem worth using as a document identification (the lawyer example) but it perfectly reasonable to use between trusted parties as a message verification hash for things with a low to medium value and a short lifetime.

(Don't get the government or really motivated crooks interested, and don't hide a secret people will still be interested in twenty years from now.)

Yeah, my parents weren't happy with my calls to Russia... But they had some good software I really wanted. I didn't understand why they were so upset, I did have the money to pay the phone bill.

So you code in Perl too, eh?

Never underestimate teh powar of teh PHP!!!!1

A friend needed something to count the number of commas in a textfile, so I wrote him the following console script. OCR, anyone?

Evil vile perverted PHP script deleted due to Slashdot facism. Was it trying to protect the sanity of young innocent proto-nerds?

Oh, and Slashdot says "Please use fewer 'junk' characters." That's the nastiest thing anyone's ever said about my programming! I'm really hurt! *Sniff!*

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Bah. Needs more non-nonsensical stuff.

"Read other people's messages before posting your own to avoid simply duplicating what has already been said." If anyone's duplicating my code, I pity them, poor deluded fools. Plus, does this rule mean I have to read everything at a threshold of -1? Including all the goat porn? I'm feeling queasy already. Make it stop!

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Still too many junk characters? Man, that hurts. I know Slash was written in Perl, but that doesn't mean it has to take it out on us enlightened individuals who program indecipherable gibberish in other, saner languages. Heh.

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Christ, Slashdot, what do you want? Blood? If you don't like my programming, just say!

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Okay, okay! I admit it! I learned to program in BASICA in DOS! Yes, I know it shows. GW-BASIC was just a pipe-dream for me, and the holiness of the line-number-free QBASIC was a distant vision in the distance. But I repent! I shall never use another GOTO, VARPTR, DEF SEG or POKE again! Just let me post!

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Bastard.

You really don't like my program, do you? Well, I'll beat you! I'll delete it! And upload it here!

Yes and np. You cannot "declare obsolete" any particular code - if you wan't to count in Roman numbers, you are free to do so (and I'm pretty sure there is an emacs macro to facilitate this). However, in 1999 Morse code indeed was withdrawn from "officlal" maritime distress communication. When you find yourself in deep caca on a sinking wessel, you are no longer obliged to yell "dee dee dee daa daa daa dee dee dee" to your satellite phone. In twenty first century, you can just scream "heeeeellllp!". That's what I call progress!

... Opportunity was digging a trench in the Martian soil. I built this animation from recent raw images, and I wouldn't be surprised if NASA/JPL unveil their own version at this afternoon's press conference (6pm GMT, IIRC, and it'll probably broadcast on NASA TV.

Mirror this image if you like; my ISP probably won't be too pleased if all their bandwidth gets eaten by greedy Slashdotters. :)

Beware! Debian Linux can have serious side effects on its users.

Linux is a drug. Beware of its effects!

Greg Egan wrote a very good short story based on this very premise, only using neural implants as market-research devices.

It also has some of the best non-Smiths Smiths lyrics ever seen in print. :-)

South Africa (where I come from). There is no need to, and in fact no WAY to, register a copyright (except for films). There is no copyright office or the like, only a patent office. Reference: Department of Trade and Industry (SA)

Collecting damages involves proving that you are in possession of the original copy of the work, which is most easily done by proving that you had the complete work before the first publication. I don't have a legal reference, but I have associations with two successful Copyright defendants.

WIPO's rules require that all signatory countries enact legislation to recognise only: the WORD "Copyright", the copyright symbol (and bracket-c-bracket is specifically excluded in recent WIPO commentaries, but can be recognised by individual countries if they choose to), AND THEY DO NOT REQUIRE COPYRIGHT TO BE REGISTERED.

I don't have a reference for the symbol vs. (C) commentary, but according to this article, this article, and in particular this article from the Library of Congress you haven't done your research. Or you can read from the Berne Convention itself. In particular take note of the line "Before an infringement suit may be filed in court, registration is necessary for works of U. S. origin", as well as references in all three articles to the registration requirement for claiming infringement being a purely US phenomenon, but that it may make it easy to claim damages in other jurisdictions. Registration can also take place at any time in a Copyright life!

Not only did you get it backwards, (the UCC only recognizes the (c) as a valid copyright notice) but all of the above is meaningless if you haven't registered the copyright.

1. The symbol © (the letter C in a circle), or the word "Copyright," or the abbreviation "Copr."; and, from LOC.

When copyright is challanged, the onus is on the author to prove that their work predates any work the claimant can prove.

Wrong.

Rephase, your Honour. When copyright is challanged, the onus is on the challanged to prove that their work predates anything the defendant can prove.

Same effect. At long as I can prove I owned the work before you did, you can't possible own the Copyright. This is enough to get even a registration overturned in court (since you don't have to register a Copyright at the beginning of its life).

This is definately NOT a recommended method. The only recommended method is formal registration.

Only in the US, Canada and other countries where they HAVE registries.

Actually it only proves that you can mail yourself an empty(?) envelope.

No, this is why it specifically has to be registered mail, or the equivalent service, because they will not accept unsealed mail. Registered mail ensures that the mail is delivered and not tampered with. Or did you miss the bit about "containing the complete work"?

You might look here [copyright.gov] for some correct information on copyright in the US. There are also links to international copyright law.

Do I have to register with your office to be protected? No. In general, registration is voluntary. Copyright exists from the moment the work is created. You will have to register, however, if you wish to bring a lawsuit for infringement of a U.S. work. See Circular 1, section Copyright Registration. Note: "U.S. work", a sentiment borne out by the LOC page and other legal articles.

Thank you for playing, consider yourself WRONG. Insert brain to continue...

The Berne Convention (non-legal but decent summary here) limits your extraterrorial rebellion to Singapore and Taiwan. The copyright has to be respected (i.e. pay up, or don't play) everywhere else on the planet.

If you're gonna fight, fight now. There's nowhere else to go. Except maybe Antarctica.

Zathrus writes:
Kurzweil repeatedly refers to "The Singularity", which is (as he defines it), "a merger between human intelligence and machine intelligence that is going to create something bigger than itself." For reference, this is very similar to something that Vernor Vinge [amazon.com] has espoused in several novels, chiefly Marooned in Realtime [amazon.com]. Basically that technological progress is logarithmic in scale, not linear.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: the "Singularity" is just Rapture For Nerds . That's Ken McLeod's phrase, not mine.

Blind faith in the "Singularity" is nothing more or less than an epiphenomena of the psychological condition of technophilia that borders on fetishism.

do a search on google for more.

My ranking is Capsula > Erector > Tinker Toys > Lincoln Logs > Lego.

1. Rivetron
2. Construx
3. Lego
4. Robotix (a little limited in what you could make because of the lack of variation in structural parts. The motors, claws and jaws kicked ass, though.)
5. Giant Tinker Toys
6. Capsela (way too limited in what you could make, and they were always bulbous contraptions. The floats for making watercraft were nice, though.)
7. Lincoln Logs (Oh, look! I made another log cabin!)

There's a good web page here which has some plans for some cool models (dinosaurs, airplanes, diggers, etc.), and some photos of some pretty weird things made out of Meccano, too. :)

jet engine developed by the Germans
Ahem. Jet Engine. I think you'll find this was invented by Sir Frank Whittle in the early 30's. Just that the Air Ministry wouldn't back it. Had it been put into development sooner the Battle of Britain may have been a lot shorter, and the war...
We also invented RADAR, and used it to detect the incoming bombers so squadrons could be scrambled in time to get to the right height.

Actualy[sic], anybody have a UK source other than amazon.com?

You could try streetsonline. For a hardback copy at 19 UK Pounds, or a paperback [Am. Eng. = "softback"] copy at 14.24 UK Pounds. They advertize US shipping.

The review referred to certainly makes me want to read the book. She sounds a very interesting character, strange obsession with degree courses notwithstanding. I'm interested to see how well the academic wrap of 'a translation of medieval Latin manuscripts (the work of Dr. Pierce Ratcliff, professor of War Studies), a major revision and modernisation of the "Lost History of Burgundy"' goes. A similar narrative device in Stephen Lawhead's Celtic Crusade cycle can be a little jarring - though it does have a feeling of leading up to something.
- Derwen

Here for starters.

Check out the last /. story on this, with more links.

George

Some History:In the late sixties Roy Bates and his family occupied one of the forts and declared himself a soverign nation. This was upheld in British Court and the long bizarre history began. The tiny nation was attacked and captured by a German businessman and friends for several weeks until Roy could put a crew together to retake it by rappeling from helicopters. (There were no known fatalities from these actions.) Here are some fun links to learn more:

• The New York Times Article that started it all.
• What appears to be the official webisite:http://www.sealandgov.com/index.html
• The HavenCo homepage: http://www.havenco.com/
• A very nice article about the off-shore radio stations in England during the 1960's. http://fre\espace.virg in.net/line.design/forts/radioforts.htm. This includes a nice picture of the fort being installed: http://freespace.virgin .net/line.design/forts/sea_forts.htm.
• Some publicity shots of Sealand from their old (archived) website. http://www.fruitsofthese a.demon.co.uk/sealand/gallery.html.
• A Guardian Article about Sealand.
• A Sunday Telegraph Article.
• Dorothy Lerda at The National Geographic answers a question about Sealand. (Notice that she has what is likely to be the web address of the imposters responsible for selling passports.)
• A brief history of the forts with pictures and diagrams.

I hadn't previously considered that as the brash young authors whose early work I found so hollow [1] would finally mature and produce works of more substance. Sometimes you just don't see these things coming.

By the way, I'm a little surprised to see such a detailed discussion of the sub-genre that omits mentioning the short story that actually coined the term cyberpunk. [2] Perhaps that's because it presented these young criminals as what they were, rather than as semi-autistic [3] sort-of heros. Aristotle seems once again to have been right about the superiority of a plausible impossibility in fiction.

[1] I have always thought that the description of Sterling's work as cinematic was a stunningly accurate summation of its strengths and weaknesses, especially in an era whose leading examples of cinematic success included the state of the art effect, bad space opera story of Star Wars

[2] Oh, all right: for the lazy-asses who can't find so simple a thing on their own, here's the first hit from Google: the answer.

[3] Shadow Syndromes, by Ratey and Johnson. Left as an exercise for those who want to learn interesting things.