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Translucent Databases
Translucent Databases has all the hallmarks of Wayner's books: clear, easy to read exposition of the main issues, why they're important, and, in his technical books, excellently documented code written for the most popular platforms for the technology in question.
This book in particular should be an instant classic because like all great books, it takes what should be a very simple idea, encrypted databases, and expands it to some amazing conclusions.
For a long time now, I've been interested in what I call the geodesic economy, where all information, including information controlling financial assets, is fractally "surfacted", like so much grease in soapy dishwater, as far out into the edges of a ubiquitous internetwork as Moore's Law will allow, using financial cryptography protocols to secure transactions and markets on a nominally insecure, but ubiquitous, public internetwork.
People who are familiar with my thinking about such things over the past 8 years will see quite quickly why I think Peter's new book is so important. Transparent databases represent a way not only to link the batch-settled, book-entry debit-for-credit world of modern financial operations with a more simply founded, but much more sophisticated world which uses cryptographic tokens representing control of various financial and real assets. They also show us how to actually account for those tokens in such a fashion that every financial actor in that market, man or machine, can trust that their bearer certificates are authentic ones, and done in such a fashion that a given token retains its cryptographic integrity, including the functionally anonymous characteristics that made it so cheap to use in the first place.
The singular feature of Wayner's translucent databases is that, like internet bearer transactions themselves, the cryptography securing data in them can happen in the client, and not a centrally vulnerable server. More to the point, by using data stored in this fashion, the data can be dispersed as far out in the network as... well, Moore's Law allows, in extremely fast and lightweight files, and, instead of creating summaries of data for reports, the data can be polled for as close to its source as possible, instantaneously, in realtime, instead of being rolled up into increasingly larger batch-processed summaries taking weeks, sometimes months, to produce and audit.
There are obvious implications for my own particular hobby-horses, like anonymous but accurate double spend databases for bearer transactions, where only a simple blinded m-of-n cryptographic hash of a given promise to pay is necessary to prevent the duplication of that promise to more than one person at a time. However, for the rest of us :-), Wayner also points to a whole host of much less esoteric applications in the lots of the usual places where absolute privacy and extremely authentic information, is at a premium. Examples for military, medical, and anti-rape databases, for accounting systems and securities transactions, and even for internet poker -- the paradigm of completely untrusted parties cooperating for what each player hopes will be his own, preferrably cash, benefit -- are all presented in clear writing and running code.
There has been a lot of lip-service in the privacy community about "owning" your own data. Unfortunately, by involving the state at all, these "advocates" almost always favor inadvertantly draconian political solutions to the problem presented by the ubiquity of database technology and its otherwise beneficial presense in our lives. They ususally present this nonsense as a "sacrifice" for the "greater good" that would make Hayek's Road to Serfdom look like Lilac Sunday at the local arboretum.
In Translucent Databases, Wayner shows, in precise detail, with code, how to solve that problem, without trusting lawyers, much less guys with guns.
Though quite a short read, the scope of the book itself is quite considerable. Wayner starts from simple hashes of data to merely obscure it, through various kinds of encryption, quantization of data, and even accounting with encrypted data using what amounts to virtual cumulative crossfoots like the kind you would see on all good accounting reports. In so doing, Wayner explains, quite simply, something that people like Eric Hughes made great, complicated hay out of years ago with gangling theories of encrypted "open" books.
Ultimately, Wayner really does end up where a lot of us think databases will be someday, particularly in finance: repositories of data accessible only by digital bearer tokens using various blind signature protocols, neatly, and quite literally, "dis-integrating" the ability of databases to be used against us as a tool of totalitarianism, exemplified most recently by Simpson Garfinkel in his book Database Nation , and, oddly enough, not because someone or other wants to strike a blow against the empire, but simply because it's safer -- and cheaper -- to do that way.
Every database programmer should have a copy of this simple and elegant book on his reference bookshelf. Particularly if he cares about the integrity of his data, the liability to the database's owner should information be misappropriated, and, not least, about freedom itself in a world of ubiquitous, and, frankly, necessary, stored detail: details about practically every person on earth, their property and finances, and, ultimately, everything they do.
Translucent Databases presents a simple, frankly beautiful, solution to David Brin's world of ubiquitous surveillance, one not requiring, as Brin seems to want, "trust" of state force-monopolists, much less their lawyers and apparatchiks.
In fact, it's such an elegant solution that, as Schopenhauer liked to say about the public acceptance of important new ideas, soon enough, people will say it was obvious all along.
Robert Hettinga is founder of IBUC, the Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation, which will, hopefully, someday, :-), use translucent databases full of internet bearer certificates to reduce transaction costs by three orders of magnitude. You can purchase Translucent Databases through the publisher. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to submit yours, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
You're all GAY more like!
Fist Sport!
2nd! Post.. Someday.. Someday i'll be first..
so shallow your datbases are transparent.
You also are gay.
G to the oatse
C to the izzex
fo shizzle my nizzle and stfu i don't care what you have to say.
select * from sexo_changeo order by gheyness desc go name gheyness ------------------ cmdrtaco 100 cowboyneal 99.9
It is official; netsplit.de confirms: OPN is dying
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered OPN community when netsplit.de confirmed that OPN market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. This news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. OPN is collapsing in complete disarray.
You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict OPN's future. The hand writing is on the wall: OPN faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for OPN because OPN is dying. Things are looking very bad for OPN. As many of us are already aware, OPN continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
In the past month, OPN has lost 3 servers. With the current count of 29 servers, it will logically be 9 months until there are no servers remaining at all. Obviously, the network will probably survive slightly longer than this; it may even drag on for a whole extra year, crawling along like an undead corpse.
Network operator lilo also faces a bleak future. With his rapidly deteriorating financial situation and crucial position to the running and future of the network, it is only a matter of weeks before he is forced to leave and OPN descends into anarchy and chaos without a leader.
Fact: OPN is dying
THE TROLL POLKA ARSCHFICKEN MIT ZIEGEN By Serial Troller slashdotorg das nicht ein early post Ja Das ist mein early postIs das nicht ein Goatse goatsecx ghost Ja Das ist mein Goatse goatsecx ghostEarly post Goatse goatsecx ghostOh du schdu schdu schsucksdas post at minus one Ja Das ist at minus oneIs das trolling so much fun Ja Das trolling is so funMinus one trolling funEarly post Goatse goatsecx ghostOh du schdu schdu schsucksdas nicht ein big crapflood Ja Das ist mein big crapfloodIs it worthless Linux FUD Ja Das ist mein Linux FUDBig crapflood Linux FUDMinus one trolling funEarly post Goatse goatsecx ghostOh du schdu schdu schsucksdas nicht der CowBoiKneel Ja Das ist der CowBoiKneelIs dis nicht his manchode meal Ja Das ist his manchode mealCowBoiKneel manchode mealBig crapflood Linux FUDMinus one trolling funEarly post Goatse goatsecx ghostOh du schdu schdu schsucksdas nicht ein WIPO Troll Ja Das ist der WIPO TrollIs das nicht ein Goatse goatsecx hole Ja Das ist der Goatse goatsecx holeWIPO Troll Goatse goatsecx holeCowBoiKneel manchode mealBig crapflood Linux FUDMinus one trolling funEarly post Goatse goatsecx ghostOh du schdu schdu schsucksdas nicht Jon Katzslave boys Ja Das ist Jon Katzslave boysUnd arenthey Tacosex toys Ja They are Tacosex toysKatzslave boys Robsex toysWIPO Troll Goatse goatsecx holeCowBoiKneel manchode mealBig crapflood Linux FUDMinus one trolling funEarly post Goatse goatsecx ghostOh du schdu schdu schsucksdas nicht ein trolltalk thread Ja Das ist ein trolltalk threadIs it nicht now FUCKING DEAD Ja Is really FUCKING DEADTrolltalk thread FUCKING DEADKatzslave boys Robsex toysWIPO Troll Goatse goatsecx holeCowBoiKneel manchode mealBig crapflood Linux FUDMinus one trolling funEarly post Goatse goatsecx ghostOh du schdu schdu schsucksChange Log Subtle changes to most verses It sounded really gay before Removed all references to Tacopud May have been high at time Will investigate furtherFinally think I have goat sex written correctly in German I think Arschficken2002 Serial Troller Permission to reproduce this document is granted provided that you send all the bukkake porn you can find to serialtrollerhotmailcom mailto
-pwpbot
The Chocolate Chip Croissant [hereinafter refered to as
`c/3'] resides, splend'drous, in state as it were, an aura
of piquant expectancy filling the otherwise bleak landscape
with a tenuous veil of diffuse rococco blandishments
reminscent of a bygone Dali. Ruffling through the Power
Grass, bleating Vaughn Williams anthems to Itself, The
Sinuoid wreathes obliquely betwixt the ant-eaten AM-PM Mini
Market soft-serve ice cream cone and the nether buttress
upon seven of the like to which, the C/3 expresses inertia.
To nothing in Particular, a Voice as a flocculent zephyr
rises like heat on a New Mexico highway, mingling with
distorted gospel cassettes and the plaintive honking
burbles of Carlos "Spit-Key" Ayrton-Plinth, baring the
naked soul of his Selmer alto saxophone upon the
discriminate ear of the desert floor. "Spuck" It says.
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Optical Storage Technology !!!
Space Propulsion Engine for Flying Saucer - New Physics
Rumor in Silicon Valley -
Inventor of 3D volume holographic optical storage
shopping his concept for Space Propulsion Engine
using Propellantless Mass to US and other countries.
for further look at biography background goto
http://colossalstorage.net/colossal.htm
He says he has researched all propulsion concepts at NASA, Lockheed,
Europe, Asia, and Russian Space Agencies and knows their technology
but he laughs when he thinks how well his technology will do next to
the present technology, there is no earthly comparison !
He is working in top secret and he says no physicist or scientist
he has ever studied or researched had this approach and knows his
concept will work to give near light speed travel thru Galaxy with
500K/Miles per Hour to start or 138 miles/sec. Nasa fastest time
are 25,000 mile/hr or 3.9 miles/sec
He says it is a mankind first concept !!
Translucent Databases: Sex, Violence, and Intrigue in the Action Packed World of SQL
Don't give me none of this "nature theme" business.
teste