OK - I realize that this post was an off-topic attempt at humor. But I just grabbed this book at my local library (I love working close to the library - I had this book in my hands within 30 minutes of this review being posted 'cuz it sounded cool and I was bored.)
Family Circus actually makes up about half of the first three pages of the comic introduction (pages xi-xiii). I always considered Family Circus a stain on the comic page of our paper growing up but, although she acknowledges that Keane isn't actually very funny, she treats the strip with a nice kind of respect that reminded me that FC did actually leave an impression on me. Even if I thought it sucked...
I find when I have to use those windows boxes on site, I often really, really miss having my unix tools (sed, awk, etc...) around.
1) Install Cygwin. 2) Add the Cygwin bin directory to your path. 3) Enjoy - The Command Prompt just got a helluva lot more useful.
Wasted 3 mod points that I'd contributed before posting, but felt the need to share the joy of Cygwin. Makes Windows damned near tolerable for people that have to have it.
That's true as long as your key is the same size as your message. Otherwise, applying an XOR cipher won't make the data look much more like noise than it started out as.
Imagine a really short XOR key - 1 bit. The data will be either identical to the original, or an exact inverse. In either case, it is exactly as close to noise as it started, it just may be harder to notice as data to the naked eye - No matter how random your key was. Now think forward to a 2-bit key - Better, but not great (or even good). Until you get to a 1-time-pad where key_length==file_length, you've not ensured noise. With XOR, the randomness of the key is a very minor point unless you're really far from random.
Side note - If you're going to use an XOR cipher, apply it 3 times for added security. For a small fee, I'll provide you with an algorithm that can accomplish this nearly as quickly as applying it once.
You may be able to convince me that steganographicly hidden could be detected by looking at a compressed image and detecting areas that would not normally be produced by whatever compression algorithm is employed (jpeg, gif, whatever). But that's an entirely different game than looking at a file that's completely white noise and deciding whether or not it's encrypted.
Also, maybe I'm just not deep enough, but I don't understand at all what this has to do with information being destroyed or black holes. This is a matter of information being detected, not destroyed.
No, stenography. Their software can detect files that are written in shorthand. I find that much more plausible than the idea that it can tell strongly encrypted data from noise.
Right - If your encrypted file is distinguishable from noise, your algorithm is broken. Maybe they were using this to find things encrypted using the ROT-13 or XOR cipher? I find it very hard to believe that this thing could distinguish between an AES encrypted file and a file of the same size full of random bits. Its site claims that it, "Detects Encrypted Files, including TrueCrypt", but my guess is that they just look for headerless files full of noise.
They give no details about how they do it other than "There actually is a pattern to it. You have to know how to extract that pattern.", but I'm still calling snake oil.
I don't link to slashdot on my home page, am I guilty of censorship against slashdot?
If you've never linked to slashdot from your homepage, you're OK. However if you have a link on there and later decide, "You know, that link is unnecessary and silly," and remove it - You've just self-censored. God help you if somebody else sends you an e-mail saying that the link is pointless and that you should take it down - Then if you do what they suggest, you have an obligation to fight censorship by leaving it up.
In case the sarcasm isn't coming across through the post, I agree with you - This is not censorship. And associating it with censorship waters down valid arguments against censorship. The government putting out a publication that the tax-payers largely object to would not be some strike for free speech, it would be misallocated government spending.
There are easy solutions for that, it's just that some fundamentalists aren't ready to accept them. Exempli gratia: * Hint - It's green and Charlton Heston spoke out strongly against it. * He who walks behind the rows * A workable system that apparently was in place until some ass-hat named Logan busted it up.
See, who says that the elderly have to be a drain on society?
I believe that China's success in this field may be the result of much less oversight and fewer regulations.
Or maybe less scrutiny/peer-review on their results? Untying a researcher's hands and letting them do whatever they want could let them advance more quickly (I'd cite a couple of counter-examples, but I don't want to Godwin the thread). But, I suspect that what we're seeing isn't a huge banner showing success due to Chinese freedom, but a big PR campaign. As soon as Chinese doctors start hiring on at the Mayo Clinic to fix people using these techniques, I'll apologize for my skepticism.
Buying stock is tied to business success - It's "investing" rather than "gambling". Buying gas I think is a closer every-day similarity to gambling - The price could be lower tomorrow, and you would have lost out.
The thing that bugs me, is why in the hell do we allow churches to hold bingo tournaments with cash prizes in places that ban gambling!?! It's basically Keno for old ladies (I know, I know - Keno is Keno for old ladies...) Either legalize it or don't.
I'll stop this rant before I start in on the reservations just down the hill from here...
I think that the idea that they like rap was just invented by the local parents.
"If you keep listening to that, the mormon crickets will come and get you!"
I'll have to remember that trick for when mine are old enough to start playing crap on the radio. "Sorry, m'boy. The only way we can keep the boogy-man away is to spin up some of Dad's Floyd albums. Maybe you can listen to your music really quietly in the basement."
I put my faith in Tor for web-browsing and PeerGuardian 2 for P2P to handle the IP tracking. (I can't remember the last time I needed Tor, though. How many times do you need to download an improvised munitions manual or search for "murder wife untraceable poison"?) But I really do stay logged into Google (typically).
There was actually an interesting comment yesterday from somebody who was convinced that using PG2 was equivalent to shooting yourself in the foot, but I'm not sold. It's up no matter what I'm doing.
Wow - I have now. Redundo's got >95,000 hits and Berata has >60,000. Quizzomandus is the only "word" without hits.
Obviously, a lot of people have been plagiarizing my paper. Many of them started, apparently, before I was even born - Naming companies and such to cash in on my future fame.
But a lot of faith is put in it. I've got a friend that works at the University of Phoenix. We caught up not long ago and he was singing praises about how you just dump a paper into this tool he uses and it instantly tells you the exact percentage of plagiarism content in the student's paper. Too high == disciplinary action - Apparently without even bothering tracking sources or verifying specific plagiarized sections.
Of course, this all came to me second hand - I've not used the tools myself.
As long as your prof accepts foreign language papers, you're golden. Or, find a paper that you want to rip off written in German/French/Spanish/whatever and dump it through babelfish:
Your school/university controls your homeworks/teses plagiat?
I don't know about you, but if I evacuate without instruction from management, it counts against my vacation time. Doesn't matter if I'm afraid for my safety (although in the case of a fire or something, I'm sure they'd act rationally). I've burned vacation a couple of times leaving early when the roads were piling up with snow and ice bad and wrecks started piling up just so that I wouldn't wind up stranded at work or wrecked at the side of the road.
If I told my manager that I took off early because I was scared of a plane, he might be OK with it, but would certainly dock me vacation.
(OK, I guess that technically taking vacation is "time off with pay", I was just assuming that wasn't what you meant.)
Still, I guess any excuse to go home early is a good one, right?
Something is seriously upside-down when it was the 'liberal' of the bunch that balanced the budget while the 'conservatives' were blowing the top off of the national debt. (Although our current 'liberal' is really taking them to school on that.)
I must not understand the terms 'liberal' and 'conservative'.
I'm sure I'll find a way to make mathematics into an evil enterprise.
It already is. If it wasn't for mathematicians, we'd have no encryption. And, as we all know, encryption's only use is to hide evidence of criminal behavior.
That's it. The next time somebody calls me evil, I'm going to destroy their house with my weather machine and send my droid army after their loved ones. That'll teach then to describe engineers as evil nerds.
Slashdot Mirror
OK - I realize that this post was an off-topic attempt at humor. But I just grabbed this book at my local library (I love working close to the library - I had this book in my hands within 30 minutes of this review being posted 'cuz it sounded cool and I was bored.)
Family Circus actually makes up about half of the first three pages of the comic introduction (pages xi-xiii). I always considered Family Circus a stain on the comic page of our paper growing up but, although she acknowledges that Keane isn't actually very funny, she treats the strip with a nice kind of respect that reminded me that FC did actually leave an impression on me. Even if I thought it sucked...
That's strange, I didn't realize the constitutional amendments could be voided with the passage of regular laws.
You must be new here.
Regular laws don't actually void the constitution, they just 'clarify' it into ineffectiveness.
I find when I have to use those windows boxes on site, I often really, really miss having my unix tools (sed, awk, etc...) around.
1) Install Cygwin.
2) Add the Cygwin bin directory to your path.
3) Enjoy - The Command Prompt just got a helluva lot more useful.
Wasted 3 mod points that I'd contributed before posting, but felt the need to share the joy of Cygwin. Makes Windows damned near tolerable for people that have to have it.
That's true as long as your key is the same size as your message. Otherwise, applying an XOR cipher won't make the data look much more like noise than it started out as.
Imagine a really short XOR key - 1 bit. The data will be either identical to the original, or an exact inverse. In either case, it is exactly as close to noise as it started, it just may be harder to notice as data to the naked eye - No matter how random your key was. Now think forward to a 2-bit key - Better, but not great (or even good). Until you get to a 1-time-pad where key_length==file_length, you've not ensured noise. With XOR, the randomness of the key is a very minor point unless you're really far from random.
Side note - If you're going to use an XOR cipher, apply it 3 times for added security. For a small fee, I'll provide you with an algorithm that can accomplish this nearly as quickly as applying it once.
You may be able to convince me that steganographicly hidden could be detected by looking at a compressed image and detecting areas that would not normally be produced by whatever compression algorithm is employed (jpeg, gif, whatever). But that's an entirely different game than looking at a file that's completely white noise and deciding whether or not it's encrypted.
Also, maybe I'm just not deep enough, but I don't understand at all what this has to do with information being destroyed or black holes. This is a matter of information being detected, not destroyed.
No, stenography. Their software can detect files that are written in shorthand. I find that much more plausible than the idea that it can tell strongly encrypted data from noise.
Right - If your encrypted file is distinguishable from noise, your algorithm is broken. Maybe they were using this to find things encrypted using the ROT-13 or XOR cipher? I find it very hard to believe that this thing could distinguish between an AES encrypted file and a file of the same size full of random bits. Its site claims that it, "Detects Encrypted Files, including TrueCrypt", but my guess is that they just look for headerless files full of noise.
They give no details about how they do it other than "There actually is a pattern to it. You have to know how to extract that pattern.", but I'm still calling snake oil.
I don't link to slashdot on my home page, am I guilty of censorship against slashdot?
If you've never linked to slashdot from your homepage, you're OK. However if you have a link on there and later decide, "You know, that link is unnecessary and silly," and remove it - You've just self-censored. God help you if somebody else sends you an e-mail saying that the link is pointless and that you should take it down - Then if you do what they suggest, you have an obligation to fight censorship by leaving it up.
In case the sarcasm isn't coming across through the post, I agree with you - This is not censorship. And associating it with censorship waters down valid arguments against censorship. The government putting out a publication that the tax-payers largely object to would not be some strike for free speech, it would be misallocated government spending.
There are easy solutions for that, it's just that some fundamentalists aren't ready to accept them. Exempli gratia:
* Hint - It's green and Charlton Heston spoke out strongly against it.
* He who walks behind the rows
* A workable system that apparently was in place until some ass-hat named Logan busted it up.
See, who says that the elderly have to be a drain on society?
I believe that China's success in this field may be the result of much less oversight and fewer regulations.
Or maybe less scrutiny/peer-review on their results? Untying a researcher's hands and letting them do whatever they want could let them advance more quickly (I'd cite a couple of counter-examples, but I don't want to Godwin the thread). But, I suspect that what we're seeing isn't a huge banner showing success due to Chinese freedom, but a big PR campaign. As soon as Chinese doctors start hiring on at the Mayo Clinic to fix people using these techniques, I'll apologize for my skepticism.
The weird thing is that if it was something like wool, there would probably be no objection.
Buying stock is tied to business success - It's "investing" rather than "gambling". Buying gas I think is a closer every-day similarity to gambling - The price could be lower tomorrow, and you would have lost out.
The thing that bugs me, is why in the hell do we allow churches to hold bingo tournaments with cash prizes in places that ban gambling!?! It's basically Keno for old ladies (I know, I know - Keno is Keno for old ladies...) Either legalize it or don't.
I'll stop this rant before I start in on the reservations just down the hill from here...
I think that the idea that they like rap was just invented by the local parents.
"If you keep listening to that, the mormon crickets will come and get you!"
I'll have to remember that trick for when mine are old enough to start playing crap on the radio. "Sorry, m'boy. The only way we can keep the boogy-man away is to spin up some of Dad's Floyd albums. Maybe you can listen to your music really quietly in the basement."
I put my faith in Tor for web-browsing and PeerGuardian 2 for P2P to handle the IP tracking. (I can't remember the last time I needed Tor, though. How many times do you need to download an improvised munitions manual or search for "murder wife untraceable poison"?) But I really do stay logged into Google (typically).
There was actually an interesting comment yesterday from somebody who was convinced that using PG2 was equivalent to shooting yourself in the foot, but I'm not sold. It's up no matter what I'm doing.
Wow - I have now. Redundo's got >95,000 hits and Berata has >60,000. Quizzomandus is the only "word" without hits.
Obviously, a lot of people have been plagiarizing my paper. Many of them started, apparently, before I was even born - Naming companies and such to cash in on my future fame.
Just a side note - George Harrison/Ronald Mack is a much better example of musical plagiarism than what sprang to my mind.
Damn you xkcd. You've ruined me.
Simply using words would not constitute plagiarism. You just can't allow students to use words that somebody else has used before.
For more information of this technique, please read my recent paper, Clickous Verandim Redundo Berata Quizzomandus.
But a lot of faith is put in it. I've got a friend that works at the University of Phoenix. We caught up not long ago and he was singing praises about how you just dump a paper into this tool he uses and it instantly tells you the exact percentage of plagiarism content in the student's paper. Too high == disciplinary action - Apparently without even bothering tracking sources or verifying specific plagiarized sections.
Of course, this all came to me second hand - I've not used the tools myself.
Oesday ouryay oolschay/universitysay eckchay ouryay omeworkshay/esesthay orfay agiarismplay?
As long as your prof accepts foreign language papers, you're golden. Or, find a paper that you want to rip off written in German/French/Spanish/whatever and dump it through babelfish:
Your school/university controls your homeworks/teses plagiat?
Memo to self:
Log out of Google before searching for the Army Improvised Munitions pdf.
I don't know about you, but if I evacuate without instruction from management, it counts against my vacation time. Doesn't matter if I'm afraid for my safety (although in the case of a fire or something, I'm sure they'd act rationally). I've burned vacation a couple of times leaving early when the roads were piling up with snow and ice bad and wrecks started piling up just so that I wouldn't wind up stranded at work or wrecked at the side of the road.
If I told my manager that I took off early because I was scared of a plane, he might be OK with it, but would certainly dock me vacation.
(OK, I guess that technically taking vacation is "time off with pay", I was just assuming that wasn't what you meant.)
Still, I guess any excuse to go home early is a good one, right?
Something is seriously upside-down when it was the 'liberal' of the bunch that balanced the budget while the 'conservatives' were blowing the top off of the national debt. (Although our current 'liberal' is really taking them to school on that.)
I must not understand the terms 'liberal' and 'conservative'.
I'm sure I'll find a way to make mathematics into an evil enterprise.
It already is. If it wasn't for mathematicians, we'd have no encryption. And, as we all know, encryption's only use is to hide evidence of criminal behavior.
After all, if you've got nothing to hide...
That's it. The next time somebody calls me evil, I'm going to destroy their house with my weather machine and send my droid army after their loved ones. That'll teach then to describe engineers as evil nerds.
Why is Arnold calling [what] he does acting?
Because he's a politician.