You're absolutely right regarding the 'movie house experience', but what about the DVD sales, and eventually the TV syndication. If you have the movie on your PC are you going to bother buying the DVD (hell just cut your own VCD, I know the quality isn't as good, but I'm not that much of a fanatic about movies - particularly hollywood ones) or even watch it on TV (being annoyed at the stupid editing, and the inconvenient adverts). Whilst downloading movies will simply act as a 'quality filter' for cinemas, it is fair to say that the other distribution will be affected.
The next point to consider is whether this is a bad thing. The initial distribution will probably survive, but we may be seeing the technological end to broadcast TV, and 'hard copy' distribution such as DVDs. Tivo and it's like is already killing TV advertising revenue, and that may be a shame, but it may make space for a new, vibrant, original distribution network, much as TV, and even the cinema were at the appropriate point in history. It is always difficult for the incumbent to accept that technology is changing, and they may be redundant, obviously any individual acts to defend itself when attacked, and corporations act as individuals in this way, but that's the way the world works.
It is sensible to try to influence the world towards the outcome you desire, and that whether concious or not is simply what the MPAA, RIAA, AND the pirates and anti MPAA/RIAA lobby are doing.
Whatever else can be said, it is certain that the outcome will not be fully what either of these groups hope for, and will probably be more dependent upon technology than anything else.
The problem with trivial algorithms is that you don't need to know the algorithm to crack them. You just look for patterns, and whether you have 1000, or 1000000 poor algorithms it takes exactly the same amount of time to crack, you just ignore the encription method, and look for the key, exactly the way you crack a one time pad, all it takes is a long enough message, and out pops your answer, just like cryptanalysis used to work before being put on the formal basis that brought about strong algorithmic encryption.
What you're proposing would simply massively decrease the amount of time that MOST messages would take to decrypt, whilst slightly increasing the time that strongly encrypted messages take. Or to put into the political context, those of us who think the NSA are bad people, but generally are of no interest to them, would have our mail read, but our obfuscation would ever so slightly help the nasty terrorist types who would not be foolish enough to use trivial encryption.
Re:"Not Possible," says Local Slashdot Reader
on
Time Travel
·
· Score: 1
Imagine you send someone in the future, but you he can't come back to tell you the experiment succeeded, how can you tell it even worked?
Send him 10 minutes forward - wait, confirm success.
1) We aren't trying to detect who is using radio waves now, but rather who was using radio waves when they sent them. By the time ours arrive anywhere useful I hope we'll have moved on too.
2) Decoding them isn't really the name of the game (at least initially) just finding signals that are indisputably not a natural phenomenon, and thus from another intelligence in the universe would almost certainly have incredibly far reaching effects, and I believe eventually be a 'good thing'.
Apart from anything else chances are the first signal we pick up will be 'KzAplocQQ and boB's' version of an 'I Love Lucy' rerun. One thing I don't think anyone is expecting as the first signal is something deep and meaningful, it will either be an accidental pick up (I Love Lucy), or a planned contact by counting prime numbers very slowly (or similar). Given that they might be a long way away it's going to be quite a long time before we can ask them to change the record.
If 'superphotonic' travel is possible then we'll probably arrive there before our reply does.
Anyway, whilst the other distributed projects definitely have value, in concrete, calculable terms, it's always the big stuff that's remembered in history, and if there are bug eyed monsters out there I want to be part of proving it.
John Stirling
member of 'Red Raiders' Seti group - we're red and we raid (okay not really).
Slashdot Mirror
You're absolutely right regarding the 'movie house experience', but what about the DVD sales, and eventually the TV syndication. If you have the movie on your PC are you going to bother buying the DVD (hell just cut your own VCD, I know the quality isn't as good, but I'm not that much of a fanatic about movies - particularly hollywood ones) or even watch it on TV (being annoyed at the stupid editing, and the inconvenient adverts). Whilst downloading movies will simply act as a 'quality filter' for cinemas, it is fair to say that the other distribution will be affected.
The next point to consider is whether this is a bad thing. The initial distribution will probably survive, but we may be seeing the technological end to broadcast TV, and 'hard copy' distribution such as DVDs. Tivo and it's like is already killing TV advertising revenue, and that may be a shame, but it may make space for a new, vibrant, original distribution network, much as TV, and even the cinema were at the appropriate point in history. It is always difficult for the incumbent to accept that technology is changing, and they may be redundant, obviously any individual acts to defend itself when attacked, and corporations act as individuals in this way, but that's the way the world works.
It is sensible to try to influence the world towards the outcome you desire, and that whether concious or not is simply what the MPAA, RIAA, AND the pirates and anti MPAA/RIAA lobby are doing.
Whatever else can be said, it is certain that the outcome will not be fully what either of these groups hope for, and will probably be more dependent upon technology than anything else.
What fun...
The problem with trivial algorithms is that you don't need to know the algorithm to crack them. You just look for patterns, and whether you have 1000, or 1000000 poor algorithms it takes exactly the same amount of time to crack, you just ignore the encription method, and look for the key, exactly the way you crack a one time pad, all it takes is a long enough message, and out pops your answer, just like cryptanalysis used to work before being put on the formal basis that brought about strong algorithmic encryption.
What you're proposing would simply massively decrease the amount of time that MOST messages would take to decrypt, whilst slightly increasing the time that strongly encrypted messages take. Or to put into the political context, those of us who think the NSA are bad people, but generally are of no interest to them, would have our mail read, but our obfuscation would ever so slightly help the nasty terrorist types who would not be foolish enough to use trivial encryption.
Imagine you send someone in the future, but you he can't come back to tell you the experiment succeeded, how can you tell it even worked? Send him 10 minutes forward - wait, confirm success.
1) We aren't trying to detect who is using radio waves now, but rather who was using radio waves when they sent them. By the time ours arrive anywhere useful I hope we'll have moved on too.
2) Decoding them isn't really the name of the game (at least initially) just finding signals that are indisputably not a natural phenomenon, and thus from another intelligence in the universe would almost certainly have incredibly far reaching effects, and I believe eventually be a 'good thing'.
Apart from anything else chances are the first signal we pick up will be 'KzAplocQQ and boB's' version of an 'I Love Lucy' rerun. One thing I don't think anyone is expecting as the first signal is something deep and meaningful, it will either be an accidental pick up (I Love Lucy), or a planned contact by counting prime numbers very slowly (or similar). Given that they might be a long way away it's going to be quite a long time before we can ask them to change the record.
If 'superphotonic' travel is possible then we'll probably arrive there before our reply does.
Anyway, whilst the other distributed projects definitely have value, in concrete, calculable terms, it's always the big stuff that's remembered in history, and if there are bug eyed monsters out there I want to be part of proving it.
John Stirling
member of 'Red Raiders' Seti group - we're red and we raid (okay not really).