Thanks for getting my back, dawg. It ain't no thing though -- I just be layin' down the track real smooth, content to let my hacker homeys play along. You know what I'm sayin'...
"yo, baby, I'm talking to the J.G. here, hang back a moment. Oh, baby, don't be mad at me.. OH NO YOU DIDN'T, bitch, don't be fucking with my Commodore Plus-4! When that thing finishes compiling the BLAS, it will be a stone-cold linear algebra killa..."
You know the ones I'm talking about: sensual, voluptuous honeys are always falling over the big-time hackers. Every small-timer with a perl-based Klingon language filter and a dream is just busy coding to get noticed by the crowd on Sourceforge. After that -- fawning women everywhere!
Wait... never mind. That must have been in one of those other universes I've been hearing about.
"accidemic"? Are those people who didn't know what they wanted to do in school and just kept studying until they suddenly found themselves teaching classes at a university?
"Omigod, I'm a professor. How did this happen?!"
Your comments are on target for some academics, but not all of them. The vast majority of successful scientists recognize that to disprove a false claim requires only science, not vitriol. The ones you speak of, though they may claim to be evangelists for "reason," are really just intellectual bullies who lack confidence in their own abilities. If they really wanted to show the conspiracy theorists the error of their ways, wouldn't they try some tact every now and then? Hint: Yelling "bullshit" at someone isn't a persuasive argument.
There's another, more sinister possibility... maybe the skeptic's cult gets a royalty cut for hawking Sagan's book... but I couldn't prove that, mind you.;)
>You are arrogantly claiming that evolution isn't a fact
Re-read what I said. Re-read it very carefully. Note the absence of any statement affecting anyone but me. You may choose to call it a fact. I call it a plausible syndrome of various hypotheses that conform to what we know at this moment. I would not disagree with calling it a "model," as Black Parrot has offered. The only reason I made mention of my profession was to offer a flag of truce, really; I innocently wanted someone to respond to my question with something I hadn't heard before instead of throwing me in with the young-earth zealots.
I buy microevolution. I buy much of phylogenetics. I buy speciation of the type given in this article. I want to believe, nathanh, help thou my unbelief! You don't have to fill in the gaps yourself. Just point me toward your favorite tract on punctuated equilibrium. I'll take a look and decide if it's really as compelling as you think it is.
Ultimately, my contrarian viewpoint stems from the fact that evolutionary biologists as a rule react to all criticism with vitriol and derision. In the field of astrophysics, the example suggested by Black Parrot, there are still a great many things that have not be explained. If some new evidence comes forward that modifies the timeframe somewhat, say the disputed age of a quasar, and I ask an astrophysicist about what it does to his theories, he would be frank about the adjustments that need to be made. Physical scientists, at least, are not threatened by the idea that they may not know it all. In fact, we're pretty sure we'll never know it all. In quantum mechanics, we talk about particles and waves interchangably, the nonsensical electron "spin," and orbitals that don't exist except in the hydrogen atom. When that knowledge percolates into the general population, some of those epistemological details get lost, and people begin speaking in absolutes about things which are not.
Evolutionary biologists may have hard hearts and heads from arguing with the inarguable (creationism), but that doesn't excuse their behavior with other scientists. Us chemists have a long-running joke about how you don't really need to have a conversation with those guys, because their response will always be "Of course! How could it be otherwise, because it obviously confers/doesn't confer an evolutionary advantage!" Even when the data directly contradicts a previous study.
> > That nuclear reactions power the sun can be largely reproduced in a laboratory. > So can the mechanisms posited by the theory of evolution.
*sigh* It may be that I'm uninformed, but I have not yet seen an evolutionist produce demonstrable evidence of speciation that would explain the formation of apes from amoebas as easily as one could posit the formation of iron from helium in nuclear reactions. The reason for this is precisely the question of process. I would imagine that the process happens naturally over such a long period of time, such that it would be difficult to provide such evidence. But kindly point me to the contravening evidence if it exists, because I really would like to know.
To suggest a mechanism that follows observations provides it plausibility and a measure of respectibility. But 1 must be followed by 2, 3, etc. as clearly as the spallation equations are before I would accept the theory of evolution as a law and ridicule those who would question it. Whenever there is room for uncertainty, there is room for questioning. "Consensus," ad hominem, and generating arguments-by-number out of the Defending Evolution handbook hasn't convinced me of anything in the past, because to carry a scientific argument to its conclusion it is necessary to cite the relevant evidence. If it's really as devestating a position, the support behind it should be more than "I shouldn't have to defend this" and oblique references to anti-education initiatives.
That's what my science has always been about, anyway.
That nuclear reactions power the sun can be largely reproduced in a laboratory. The notion that quarks exist certainly appears to hold given the experimental evidence, inasmuch as any quantum particle can be said to "exist." Both of those notions are testable, therefore demonstrable. There are many other such physical questions which are not directly testable in an experiment -- the existence of black holes, for example -- and I claim the right to reserve judgment on any such theories. I can make a statement as to their plausibility, but my standard for truth ("Black holes exist") is high. It doesn't have to be your standard, but I work in quantum chemistry, where semantics can confound you in a nanosecond.
I agree that irreducible complexity is mostly an argument by induction. But the fact remains that this plant we are discussing is largely a transgenic creature which happens to be capable of reproducing itself. Such organisms can be constructed in the laboratory, and I surmise, given enough effort, could be constructed to reproduce only with their own kind. In fact there are already efforts to do this sort of thing IIRC. No new complexity has been added; this plant operates like countless other plants. If, instead, it had developed some ability heretofore unseen in its phylum, then I would withdraw my objection.
It is up to the proponents of a theory, any theory, to provide evidence not only of A and Z, but all points in between if they want their work to be held up as law. The burden of proof is theirs, and the motives of their detractors is irrelevent. Though, for the record, I am not a creationist.
(You will please note this post, nor any other post of mine, will ever include "nonsense," "uninformed," or "pseudo-science." Such pejoratives should not be necessary if the strength of the argument is behind you.)
As a skeptical scientist who tends not to fully accept anything which cannot be demonstrated -- even the much-vaunted theory of evolution -- I find this speciation evidence very interesting. It would appear that macroevolution has a valuable missing link in this new plant.
But does this new weed, or any others like it, demonstrate any unique functionality? What can it do that its parents could not? The article is obviously not in the right forum to provide such details. Nevertheless, I'm curious, because I feel that the "irreducible complexity" argument remains to be answered until such a new functionality can be found.
Now if they found a weed that can breathe fire, I'd be sold!
You can read a little more about the background of this new clock at NIST's archive of a paper in IEEE T. Instrum. Meas., for those of us who foolishly let our subscription lapse...
It would appear the chief technological development that made this clock possible was the femtosecond laser. The paper also suggests that the average error could be reduced even further than the article suggests (down to attoseconds, perhaps) if higher-order Stark and Zeeman shifts are properly treated. As for practical uses, I personally can't think of any, except to finally answer the question "Does anybody really know what time it is?" But elimination of uncertainties is laudable anyway.
As a computational chemist, I can sympathize with your plight. My undergraduate training in chemistry exposed me to some of the more practical higher maths, and my graduate work armed me with a thorough understanding of Clebsch-Gordon coefficients and the Grand Orthogonality Theorem; yet All I Ever Knew About Computer Science I Learned From Commodore 64 BASIC! Unfortunately, "know" and "want to know" are two different things.
Nevertheless, I _do_ program and I consider myself a programmer. My meager self-made computer skills provide me with a good intuition about the most straightforward, bare-bones process to solve most computational chemistry problems, since many are inherently serial (equation 1 begat equation 2, etc.). When the problem is more complicated than that, I find my algorithms skills are not quite up to the task. That's not too surprising, since eventually everyone comes across a problem they can't intuit away. What I find most surprising -- and disheartening, too -- is the utter lack of primers to teach scientific programmers the computer science they need. Sure, the basic books on modern programming languages are legion, but go searching for good examples and you'll find little help among the game, database, and web guides. Not everybody is trying to build an accounting system!
A request to "applied" computer scientists out there: could you please share your mad optimization and algorithm skillz with the hard science types who lack your fine touch? We've been using C/FORTRAN like a sledgehammer because we don't know how to use a chisel.
To refer to the last author as the "primary" author, while common, is ill-advised for at least three reasons:
1. Trivially, "prima" being used to denote something which is anything but (and librarians likely find this much less trivial than I do);
2. The dilution of search effectiveness, since the last author tends to be a supervisor who has her name attached to many underlings' publications (27 at last count, vs. 5 for the first author -- even worse if you thought, understandably, that "Head-Gordon" would be enough of a qualifier and found yourself sifting through Teresa's husband Martin's papers also);
3. From a courtesy standpoint, the continued recognition of an ensconced member of the field to the exclusion of the scientists who likely did the work (Ask most professors with large research groups about a paper "to whom correspondence should be addressed" and your answer will be delayed by however long it tooks for the first author to respond to his old boss).
Profs. Head-Gordon provide another facet to the issue of mis-statements in references. Many such hyphenated names result from the fairly recent practice of both spouses changing their names at time of marriage. Whatever the advantage accrued to equality of the sexes, this can't make the citation process any easier. Incidentally, the best known scientific example of this practice is famed thermodynamist Lennard-Jones; I'd refer you to his papers, but since he died in 1954, the Science Citation Index is silent on him. And admittedly, I've forgotten where I read about his name. Maybe they were wrong...
Something I don't think anyone's pointed out yet is that the OS would largely be useless (read: unsaleable) without software.
Many people, myself included, viewed paying $499.95 for a copy of Lotus 1-2-3 back in '88 as unreasonable. It was higher than the price the market would bear. Lately the prices have been more reasonable, but for no apparent reason, now that I think about it.
How do you make money overall when your customers don't like what you want to charge for the one item but the other item is useless if they don't buy both? Sell 'em one for a pittance!
It's not a new idea. It's "give them the razor and make the money back on the blades" -- except in reverse.
The following are actual contract provisions for a book chapter I was invited to write:
"Contributor hereby assigns to Publisher... the exclusive right to publish, perform, display, reproduce, distribute and sell the Work and to create derivative works, in all forms or media now known or hereafter developed..."
It's not enough to transfer copyright for the written word -- they want me to sign over the right to make, what, the holographic 22nd century version?
"Should Contributor become unable or unwilling to perform... prior to publication of the Work, Publisher may appoint a third party to act as Contributor..."
Okay, I'd be at fault for this provision to happen, but how exactly is someone else going to finish my work? It's not entirely clear that I'd get credit for any of it if they appoint someone to "act as Contributor."
And my personal favorite: "... Contributor agrees not to divulge, disseminate or publicize the terms of this Agreement..."
which, of course, I'd be breaking right now if I'd signed it.
I agree that it has to be large and homogeneous. It certainly can't rely on traditional high-resolution NMR because I saw no mention of the handy scanner unit arriving complete with 300-lb superconducting electromagnet! So it's not resolving J coupling like most NMR. In fact it probably doesn't rely on significant magnetic fields... whether the bulk effect tensor is both strong and isotropic enough presumably was the main problem affecting the company.
My primary concern with this "security" is that I can't imagine such a low-resolution device would provide enough different keys for everyone who might be interested. And this is where the "obscurity" comes in... if they had published their algorithm ("Yeah, basically we have a material we change the ligands on, detected via low-field bulk NMR, and hopefully we can resell the same key to companies on different continents before we saturate the market") no one would be interested. It's not a matter of how much time it takes to crack... it's more the likelihood that when one gets cracked, they would all be compromised. Not particularly secure if you ask me.
But then again, I might be way off base about what they're doing; they don't tell us much, do they? YMMV.
The only thing that's new about this, as far as I can tell, is the low cost deployment. Consider what they do say about it:
- The technology uses materials with "very unique physical and chemical properties" at the "sub-molecular level."
- The reader is an RF "transceiver" which can detect the material in a manner analogous to "magnetic resonance imaging."
Sounds to me like they've build themselves a Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) spectrometer that doesn't have to be very powerful due to bulk effects -- fire some RF at it, stop, then listen.
There's nothing keeping anyone from using a more powerful NMR spectrometer to isolate the material and reproduce it. So maybe they'd just lobby to have NMR spectroscopy outlawed as a "counterfeiting tool." Security through obscurity reigns...
I think I've heard part of this argument before... it goes something like: "Why should Hank Reardon be the only one to make Reardon metal?" Read it in that context and you see immediately how ridiculous it is to rail against Unisys.
Slashdot Mirror
Nah, it's pretty but impractical. I already have enough trouble with my machines crashing...
Thanks for getting my back, dawg. It ain't no thing though -- I just be layin' down the track real smooth, content to let my hacker homeys play along. You know what I'm sayin'...
"yo, baby, I'm talking to the J.G. here, hang back a moment. Oh, baby, don't be mad at me.. OH NO YOU DIDN'T, bitch, don't be fucking with my Commodore Plus-4! When that thing finishes compiling the BLAS, it will be a stone-cold linear algebra killa..."
You guys have forgotten the biggest benefit:
It's all about the chicks.
You know the ones I'm talking about: sensual, voluptuous honeys are always falling over the big-time hackers. Every small-timer with a perl-based Klingon language filter and a dream is just busy coding to get noticed by the crowd on Sourceforge. After that -- fawning women everywhere!
Wait... never mind. That must have been in one of those other universes I've been hearing about.
Folding..
Cursing..
Exporting..
Sounds like the business plan of the Origami Boulder guy!
Slashdot's newspaper-style headlines can be confusing sometimes...
Anybody else scan the title and think, "Wha?! Only an asteroid will be visible in the sky? What about the sun?"
I had an OS/2 box that froze up for ten minutes, after which the printer spit out something I wrote a few months before but had never printed.
Is it Halloween yet?
"accidemic"? Are those people who didn't know what they wanted to do in school and just kept studying until they suddenly found themselves teaching classes at a university?
;)
"Omigod, I'm a professor. How did this happen?!"
Your comments are on target for some academics, but not all of them. The vast majority of successful scientists recognize that to disprove a false claim requires only science, not vitriol. The ones you speak of, though they may claim to be evangelists for "reason," are really just intellectual bullies who lack confidence in their own abilities. If they really wanted to show the conspiracy theorists the error of their ways, wouldn't they try some tact every now and then?
Hint: Yelling "bullshit" at someone isn't a persuasive argument.
There's another, more sinister possibility...
maybe the skeptic's cult gets a royalty cut for hawking Sagan's book... but I couldn't prove that, mind you.
Dude, Buffy is totally a geek show. Haven't you ever seen Willow Teaches Java?!
That's true. But within 150 miles of Atlanta, if you ask for a Coke and they serve you Pepsi, they have committed a Class 1 misdemeanor.
Hey dude,
You know that error you have in your text game you've been puzzling over? The problem is
2500 POKE 49152,34
should be
2500 POKE 49152,31
Hope that helps!
Me
>You are arrogantly claiming that evolution isn't a fact
Re-read what I said. Re-read it very carefully. Note the absence of any statement affecting anyone but me. You may choose to call it a fact. I call it a plausible syndrome of various hypotheses that conform to what we know at this moment. I would not disagree with calling it a "model," as Black Parrot has offered. The only reason I made mention of my profession was to offer a flag of truce, really; I innocently wanted someone to respond to my question with something I hadn't heard before instead of throwing me in with the young-earth zealots.
I buy microevolution. I buy much of phylogenetics. I buy speciation of the type given in this article. I want to believe, nathanh, help thou my unbelief! You don't have to fill in the gaps yourself. Just point me toward your favorite tract on punctuated equilibrium. I'll take a look and decide if it's really as compelling as you think it is.
Ultimately, my contrarian viewpoint stems from the fact that evolutionary biologists as a rule react to all criticism with vitriol and derision. In the field of astrophysics, the example suggested by Black Parrot, there are still a great many things that have not be explained. If some new evidence comes forward that modifies the timeframe somewhat, say the disputed age of a quasar, and I ask an astrophysicist about what it does to his theories, he would be frank about the adjustments that need to be made. Physical scientists, at least, are not threatened by the idea that they may not know it all. In fact, we're pretty sure we'll never know it all. In quantum mechanics, we talk about particles and waves interchangably, the nonsensical electron "spin," and orbitals that don't exist except in the hydrogen atom. When that knowledge percolates into the general population, some of those epistemological details get lost, and people begin speaking in absolutes about things which are not.
Evolutionary biologists may have hard hearts and heads from arguing with the inarguable (creationism), but that doesn't excuse their behavior with other scientists. Us chemists have a long-running joke about how you don't really need to have a conversation with those guys, because their response will always be "Of course! How could it be otherwise, because it obviously confers/doesn't confer an evolutionary advantage!" Even when the data directly contradicts a previous study.
> > That nuclear reactions power the sun can be largely reproduced in a laboratory.
> So can the mechanisms posited by the theory of evolution.
*sigh* It may be that I'm uninformed, but I have not yet seen an evolutionist produce demonstrable evidence of speciation that would explain the formation of apes from amoebas as easily as one could posit the formation of iron from helium in nuclear reactions. The reason for this is precisely the question of process. I would imagine that the process happens naturally over such a long period of time, such that it would be difficult to provide such evidence. But kindly point me to the contravening evidence if it exists, because I really would like to know.
To suggest a mechanism that follows observations provides it plausibility and a measure of respectibility. But 1 must be followed by 2, 3, etc. as clearly as the spallation equations are before I would accept the theory of evolution as a law and ridicule those who would question it.
Whenever there is room for uncertainty, there is room for questioning. "Consensus," ad hominem, and generating arguments-by-number out of the Defending Evolution handbook hasn't convinced me of anything in the past, because to carry a scientific argument to its conclusion it is necessary to cite the relevant evidence. If it's really as devestating a position, the support behind it should be more than "I shouldn't have to defend this" and oblique references to anti-education initiatives.
That's what my science has always been about, anyway.
That nuclear reactions power the sun can be largely reproduced in a laboratory. The notion that quarks exist certainly appears to hold given the experimental evidence, inasmuch as any quantum particle can be said to "exist." Both of those notions are testable, therefore demonstrable. There are many other such physical questions which are not directly testable in an experiment -- the existence of black holes, for example -- and I claim the right to reserve judgment on any such theories. I can make a statement as to their plausibility, but my standard for truth ("Black holes exist") is high. It doesn't have to be your standard, but I work in quantum chemistry, where semantics can confound you in a nanosecond.
I agree that irreducible complexity is mostly an argument by induction. But the fact remains that this plant we are discussing is largely a transgenic creature which happens to be capable of reproducing itself. Such organisms can be constructed in the laboratory, and I surmise, given enough effort, could be constructed to reproduce only with their own kind. In fact there are already efforts to do this sort of thing IIRC. No new complexity has been added; this plant operates like countless other plants. If, instead, it had developed some ability heretofore unseen in its phylum, then I would withdraw my objection.
It is up to the proponents of a theory, any theory, to provide evidence not only of A and Z, but all points in between if they want their work to be held up as law. The burden of proof is theirs, and the motives of their detractors is irrelevent. Though, for the record, I am not a creationist.
(You will please note this post, nor any other post of mine, will ever include "nonsense," "uninformed," or "pseudo-science." Such pejoratives should not be necessary if the strength of the argument is behind you.)
As a skeptical scientist who tends not to fully accept anything which cannot be demonstrated -- even the much-vaunted theory of evolution -- I find this speciation evidence very interesting. It would appear that macroevolution has a valuable missing link in this new plant.
But does this new weed, or any others like it, demonstrate any unique functionality? What can it do that its parents could not? The article is obviously not in the right forum to provide such details. Nevertheless, I'm curious, because I feel that the "irreducible complexity" argument remains to be answered until such a new functionality can be found.
Now if they found a weed that can breathe fire, I'd be sold!
You can read a little more about the background of this new clock at NIST's archive of a paper in IEEE T. Instrum. Meas., for those of us who foolishly let our subscription lapse...
It would appear the chief technological development that made this clock possible was the femtosecond laser. The paper also suggests that the average error could be reduced even further than the article suggests (down to attoseconds, perhaps) if higher-order Stark and Zeeman shifts are properly treated. As for practical uses, I personally can't think of any, except to finally answer the question "Does anybody really know what time it is?" But elimination of uncertainties is laudable anyway.
An excellent question and a compelling answer...
As a computational chemist, I can sympathize with your plight. My undergraduate training in chemistry exposed me to some of the more practical higher maths, and my graduate work armed me with a thorough understanding of Clebsch-Gordon coefficients and the Grand Orthogonality Theorem; yet All I Ever Knew About Computer Science I Learned From Commodore 64 BASIC! Unfortunately, "know" and "want to know" are two different things.
Nevertheless, I _do_ program and I consider myself a programmer. My meager self-made computer skills provide me with a good intuition about the most straightforward, bare-bones process to solve most computational chemistry problems, since many are inherently serial (equation 1 begat equation 2, etc.). When the problem is more complicated than that, I find my algorithms skills are not quite up to the task. That's not too surprising, since eventually everyone comes across a problem they can't intuit away. What I find most surprising -- and disheartening, too -- is the utter lack of primers to teach scientific programmers the computer science they need. Sure, the basic books on modern programming languages are legion, but go searching for good examples and you'll find little help among the game, database, and web guides. Not everybody is trying to build an accounting system!
A request to "applied" computer scientists out there: could you please share your mad optimization and algorithm skillz with the hard science types who lack your fine touch? We've been using C/FORTRAN like a sledgehammer because we don't know how to use a chisel.
My copy seems to be broken -- I can't find the Planet of the Apes!
Sorry but you touched on a peeve of mine.
To refer to the last author as the "primary" author, while common, is ill-advised for at least three reasons:
1. Trivially, "prima" being used to denote something which is anything but (and librarians likely find this much less trivial than I do);
2. The dilution of search effectiveness, since the last author tends to be a supervisor who has her name attached to many underlings' publications (27 at last count, vs. 5 for the first author -- even worse if you thought, understandably, that "Head-Gordon" would be enough of a qualifier and found yourself sifting through Teresa's husband Martin's papers also);
3. From a courtesy standpoint, the continued recognition of an ensconced member of the field to the exclusion of the scientists who likely did the work (Ask most professors with large research groups about a paper "to whom correspondence should be addressed" and your answer will be delayed by however long it tooks for the first author to respond to his old boss).
Profs. Head-Gordon provide another facet to the issue of mis-statements in references. Many such hyphenated names result from the fairly recent practice of both spouses changing their names at time of marriage. Whatever the advantage accrued to equality of the sexes, this can't make the citation process any easier. Incidentally, the best known scientific example of this practice is famed thermodynamist Lennard-Jones; I'd refer you to his papers, but since he died in 1954, the Science Citation Index is silent on him. And admittedly, I've forgotten where I read about his name. Maybe they were wrong...
Something I don't think anyone's pointed out yet is that the OS would largely be useless (read: unsaleable) without software.
Many people, myself included, viewed paying $499.95 for a copy of Lotus 1-2-3 back in '88 as unreasonable. It was higher than the price the market would bear. Lately the prices have been more reasonable, but for no apparent reason, now that I think about it.
How do you make money overall when your customers don't like what you want to charge for the one item but the other item is useless if they don't buy both? Sell 'em one for a pittance!
It's not a new idea. It's "give them the razor and make the money back on the blades" -- except in reverse.
The following are actual contract provisions for a book chapter I was invited to write:
... the exclusive right to publish, perform, display, reproduce, distribute and sell the Work and to create derivative works, in all forms or media now known or hereafter developed ..."
... prior to publication of the Work, Publisher may appoint a third party to act as Contributor ..."
..."
"Contributor hereby assigns to Publisher
It's not enough to transfer copyright for the written word -- they want me to sign over the right to make, what, the holographic 22nd century version?
"Should Contributor become unable or unwilling to perform
Okay, I'd be at fault for this provision to happen, but how exactly is someone else going to finish my work? It's not entirely clear that I'd get credit for any of it if they appoint someone to "act as Contributor."
And my personal favorite: "... Contributor agrees not to divulge, disseminate or publicize the terms of this Agreement
which, of course, I'd be breaking right now if I'd signed it.
Be careful what you agree to in black and white!
No way! I bet it's a BLAST!
*groan*
I agree that it has to be large and homogeneous. It certainly can't rely on traditional high-resolution NMR because I saw no mention of the handy scanner unit arriving complete with 300-lb superconducting electromagnet! So it's not resolving J coupling like most NMR. In fact it probably doesn't rely on significant magnetic fields... whether the bulk effect tensor is both strong and isotropic enough presumably was the main problem affecting the company.
My primary concern with this "security" is that I can't imagine such a low-resolution device would provide enough different keys for everyone who might be interested. And this is where the "obscurity" comes in... if they had published their algorithm ("Yeah, basically we have a material we change the ligands on, detected via low-field bulk NMR, and hopefully we can resell the same key to companies on different continents before we saturate the market") no one would be interested. It's not a matter of how much time it takes to crack... it's more the likelihood that when one gets cracked, they would all be compromised. Not particularly secure if you ask me.
But then again, I might be way off base about what they're doing; they don't tell us much, do they? YMMV.
The only thing that's new about this, as far as I can tell, is the low cost deployment. Consider what they do say about it:
- The technology uses materials with "very unique physical and chemical properties" at the "sub-molecular level."
- The reader is an RF "transceiver" which can detect the material in a manner analogous to "magnetic resonance imaging."
Sounds to me like they've build themselves a Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) spectrometer that doesn't have to be very powerful due to bulk effects -- fire some RF at it, stop, then listen.
There's nothing keeping anyone from using a more powerful NMR spectrometer to isolate the material and reproduce it. So maybe they'd just lobby to have NMR spectroscopy outlawed as a "counterfeiting tool." Security through obscurity reigns...
Two words:
Turtle graphics.
TO SQUARE REPEAT 4 FD 50 RT 90 END
Forget operator overloading -- Logo has built-in commands to _draw pictures on the screen_! Who could ask for anything more?
I think I've heard part of this argument before... it goes something like: "Why should Hank Reardon be the only one to make Reardon metal?" Read it in that context and you see immediately how ridiculous it is to rail against Unisys.