And this is why Gene Simmons ceased being relevant sometime in the mid 70's. Radiohead and Reznor have more creativity in their little fingers than Simmons ever had. "Oh, we'll paint our faces to cover up the fact our music sucks." Radiohead and Reznor have deviated from conventional rock mediocrity and at least been creative. You forgot the big tong. And what do you offer in exchange for that? Creativity, deviation from conventional rock mediocrity... Oh boy, I think we have enough of that already.
I like end of the paper though where, to paraphrase, because he predicts those particles there are only two options. Success or spectacular failure. Although it is more like: spectacular success or failure.
Also, any fool can see that one way to incorporate the standard model of particle physics into heterotic string theory is the symmetry breaking of E8 to its maximal subalgebra SU(3)×E6. What about SU(2)xU(1) parts of the standard model?
What is it about this particular representation that makes it a 'Theory of Everything,' as opposed to a new standard model that contains a definition of a graviton? If you had a new standard model that includes graviton, you would have had the theory of everything, because the TOE is supposed to be exactly that theory which incorporates the standard model (physics) with gravity, and those are the all interactions known in physics. The only problem is that it is not easy to just add the graviton to the Standard model. It's so complicated that one needs to get a new crack on the whole problem, thus string theory. There, particles are 10 or 11 dimensional objects that fluctuate, where most of these dimensions are microscopic (compactified) so that on low energies they are invisible. Now, there are very very many string theories, depending on how you choose symmetries , backgrounds and what not, and E8 was known as one particular type of theory within the whole String (or M-)theory.
In the String theory you can pursue at least two types of problems: 1) you want to find some theories that can in fact reproduce known physics and particularly point out some undiscovered new physics, like new particles (or some astronomical observations), which is what this dude has supposedly done; 2) Generalize the theory as far as it can go, also in order to find perhaps some smaller set of principles that govern the whole wealth of the theory
As far as the TOE is concerned, there is of course also the possibility of some quite different theory that is TOE, like loop gravity, non-commutative geometry stuff, etc. but those don't have yet the popularity of the string theory.
We know the historic answer to "B" now -- the government agencies. Public key encryption was invented/discovered (twice, separately, I believe) at intelligence agencies before it was invented/discovered in the open. Differential cryptanalysis was also discovered secretly before it was discovered openly. There's a lot more open interest in cryptography now, but I wouldn't count the NSA and its foreign counterparts out just yet. Yes sure. Now, as long as secret agencies are using secret highly unbreakable codes for secret communications, no biggie. But of course when society at large depends on some good encryption, then I'd still rather turn to mathematicians than to agencies for advice (there are then two incentives for mathematicians: societal and mathematical intricacies of the problem). The classic example is RSA--when mathematicians found it, the whole hell broke loose.
well anyone who can factor large (n X10^200) numbers quickly can break public key encryptions. How is this any different. At some point all algorithms will either be easy to brute force or have simple mathematical cracks. I agree. The difference in this particular case is that if NSA has in fact found the numbers corresponding to those that they have given in the proposed algorithm, then the algorithm would be transparent for them (or if they cracked it completely, of course).
We just depend on the facts that A) we don't believe that anyone has the computing power required to brute force the encryption in any reasonable amount of time, and B) we believe that the public will find out about any massive advances in math required to break encryptions mathematically. I agree again. The A) can be checked/estimated. The B) is basically spinning around the question whether government agencies do the math better or mathematicians that are not in those agencies. I'd say latter are going to have an edge, since they have to be educated, and that's academia's job, and not all of them are by default going to work for such agencies.
Getting the key involves solving a discrete log problem for one instance of an elliptic curve. Discrete log problem is an unsolved mathematical problem. So its solution essentially (you mileage may vary slightly) requires brute force. Either NSA has a solution and was hoping the weakness would go unnoticed, or they don't have it. If they don't have it, no one will have it for a long time. These are more difficult to compute (and therefore more time consuming) than the traditional encryption schema (discrete log problems for Z/pZ). Would it be possible to have just some particular solution(s)?
By that reasoning, that's a concern for ANY encryption standard, then. Exactly. Except that we still have mathematics to prove how hard things are to crack etc. Now, if it boils down to the problem of solving certain types of equations to figure the algorithm out, well then once this is done the algorithm is doing exactly the opposite of what is supposed to do. Even if it is not known how to solve such equations, there will definitely be in interest of any cryptographer to solve them.
A lot of people seem to forget that the NSA's only job isn't to "break codes". It's to also provide mechanisms that it believes CANNOT be easily broken to protect OUR OWN information. That's the other half of NSA's mission everyone seems to forget. I'd rather believe to mathematics than to NSA. These two are not quite the same thing.
"It's possible to implement Dual_EC_DRBG in such a way as to protect it against this backdoor, by generating new constants with another secure random-number generator and then publishing the seed. This method is even in the NIST document, in Appendix A. " Which then shifts the concern to whether the algorithm, regardless of constants, has been already broken by NSA.
What happens in the article is that one of the algorithms proposed by NSA for standardization contains possibly a major backdoor because the constants it uses to generate numbers are such that there might be other constants, unknown by looking at the algorithm itself but nevertheless possibly known to the authors at NSA that allow to get the whole generated sequence of numbers based on only 32 byte sequence of generated numbers. Maybe or maybe not, depending on whether there are such constants, which only NSA knows.
And now has an approval rating rivaling Nixon in his final days as President, has his own party turning on him and has, through his actions, lost both houses of Congress. I'm with you here, it's just that it is a wee bit more complicated. I mean it took like 7 years or so of fucking shit up on a pretty big scale (and, in contradistinction to Nixon, riding on a neo-evangelical horse) to get to this point. Coincidentally, I've watched two documentaries on PBS's Frontline today: one is
Cheney's Law which synopsis runs as:
For three decades Vice President Dick Cheney conducted a secretive, behind-closed-doors campaign to give the president virtually unlimited wartime power. Finally, in the aftermath of 9/11, the Justice Department and the White House made a number of controversial legal decisions. Orchestrated by Cheney and his lawyer David Addington, the department interpreted executive power in an expansive and extraordinary way, granting President George W. Bush the power to detain, interrogate, torture, wiretap and spy -- without congressional approval or judicial review. That's pretty heavy stuff right there, going from late Nixon's days to like right now.
The second one is Showdown with Iran, for which I think no synopsis is necessary. In epilogue of this one, some Iranian dude working on sorting things out between US and Iran says something along the lines that both sides are essentially religious fundamentalists on a grand scale. That's perhaps a problem to fathom for, say, Americans who do not see or believe in this Christian fundamentalism combined with American exceptionalism, but it's nonetheless still playing some role.
I'm sorry, but I think you either have to be a mental retard or a liar to equate the two situations. You mean equating Bush and Putin situations. Of course I'm not equating them, they are quite different. I was just responding to your underlying some kind of totalitarian tendency in Russians by somehow conflating tzar regime with communist regime with Putin's regime, which don't have that much in common. Actually, I was just trying to put it to you that the way you wrote about Putin's agenda is very easily translatable to something that looks like Bush's agenda, much easier in fact than looking for resurrection of communism in Russia, notwithstanding that Russia is far from democratic society.
You can't, especially if the speed limit is so low that everyone breaks it all the time in normal driving. So rather than making everyone a criminal that the cops have an excuse to harass at any time, you fix the law. But how? If the solution is to raise the too-low speed limits, some people will still drive over the limit especially if the limits are reasonable. I mean it's always possible to drive a bit faster, to get quicker to job or home or wherever else one is going. If the limits are raised to much, roads would become unsafe.
Most C++ programmers have no idea what an invariant is. Most C++ programmers I know of are heavy users of assert(3). But maybe that's just a local phenomenon. What assert?
Looks like the socialists are using the capitalists own weapons against them. Maybe. Or maybe the capitalists are using the socialists own weapons against them. For private gains:
If the opposition in Russia was actually opposing an oppressive regime, I might be more concerned.
Being that they're a bunch of crackpots funded by foreign interests who would like nothing better than to use these very same oppressive laws against the population of Russia for private gain, I'm actually rather amused.
Putin is giving the Russian people a familiar face; strong, authoritarian and dedicated to making Russia great. You mean like in: Bush is giving the American people a familiar face: strong, authoritarian and dedicated to making America great.
The best federal government is the one where it doesn't matter which political party runs it. This sounds a lot to me like EU. Anyhow, if this were the goal, then what would have been the point of having parties, elections, and all the democracy jazz?
I'm against FUD in general.[...] I chose to call a selective representation of reality "FUD". That's all obviously very obvious stuff to you, I mean FUD like in fear-uncertainty-doubt. I just wonder where do you get non-selective representation of reality. Particularly about Russia. With Linux is easier:
Just like most of us call "Get The Facts" site reports about Windows vs. Linux performance. The results of the benchmarks were real, it's the test conditions that were...hmmm... uneven. One can always run one's own benchmarks to get the facts right, and in my benchmarks Linux still smokes Windows big time.
As pointed out in the article, they're killing two birds with one stone. They get to appear more pro-active against piracy after all the requests from Western governments to try to stop piracy, and they get to silence critics. Yes, I think you got that right
Criticism from Western governments could be met with appeals for funding if they want them to come up with a better way to stop piracy. Speaking of money, there might be some money changing hands from major software vendors to support anti-piracy measures. How about some corporations waiving their IP rights in order to help the democratization process in Russia?
It's pretty funny that they're using this particular excuse to persecute political opposition. So I guess that's what how far they've come in the last 50 years - from malicious prosecution under the guise of national security, to malicious prosecution under the guise of protection against piracy. It's kind of funny, or perhaps sad, that you conflate the ultra-totalitarian regime of the commie regime with this kind of political prosecutions under the pretense of enforcing the IP rights.
Slashdot Mirror
It is really fantastahhhh, oh, um, ahhhh... oh... uf. I forgot what I was going to write...
Identity operation is definitely one element of any group.
In the String theory you can pursue at least two types of problems:
1) you want to find some theories that can in fact reproduce known physics and particularly point out some undiscovered new physics, like new particles (or some astronomical observations), which is what this dude has supposedly done;
2) Generalize the theory as far as it can go, also in order to find perhaps some smaller set of principles that govern the whole wealth of the theory
As far as the TOE is concerned, there is of course also the possibility of some quite different theory that is TOE, like loop gravity, non-commutative geometry stuff, etc. but those don't have yet the popularity of the string theory.
Cudos for this reference (I knew it must be more complicated than 42).
There is also one that goes something like: if you have a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.
Yeah, the whole thing with Dual_EC_DRBG is very, um, secretive.
What happens in the article is that one of the algorithms proposed by NSA for standardization contains possibly a major backdoor because the constants it uses to generate numbers are such that there might be other constants, unknown by looking at the algorithm itself but nevertheless possibly known to the authors at NSA that allow to get the whole generated sequence of numbers based on only 32 byte sequence of generated numbers. Maybe or maybe not, depending on whether there are such constants, which only NSA knows.
The second one is Showdown with Iran, for which I think no synopsis is necessary. In epilogue of this one, some Iranian dude working on sorting things out between US and Iran says something along the lines that both sides are essentially religious fundamentalists on a grand scale. That's perhaps a problem to fathom for, say, Americans who do not see or believe in this Christian fundamentalism combined with American exceptionalism, but it's nonetheless still playing some role. I'm sorry, but I think you either have to be a mental retard or a liar to equate the two situations. You mean equating Bush and Putin situations. Of course I'm not equating them, they are quite different. I was just responding to your underlying some kind of totalitarian tendency in Russians by somehow conflating tzar regime with communist regime with Putin's regime, which don't have that much in common. Actually, I was just trying to put it to you that the way you wrote about Putin's agenda is very easily translatable to something that looks like Bush's agenda, much easier in fact than looking for resurrection of communism in Russia, notwithstanding that Russia is far from democratic society.
Being that they're a bunch of crackpots funded by foreign interests who would like nothing better than to use these very same oppressive laws against the population of Russia for private gain, I'm actually rather amused.
I chose to call a selective representation of reality "FUD". That's all obviously very obvious stuff to you, I mean FUD like in fear-uncertainty-doubt. I just wonder where do you get non-selective representation of reality. Particularly about Russia. With Linux is easier: Just like most of us call "Get The Facts" site reports about Windows vs. Linux performance. The results of the benchmarks were real, it's the test conditions that were