I don't quite know what the rules are, but I assume that there must be laws governing the randomness of slot machines, no?
If not, it's basically the same as a casino using loaded dice -- casino employees could come along every x number of pulls and play each slot machine if it was guaranteed to win after that many pulls.
I bet that sloppy use of a random number generator would be fabulously illegal.
Although extremely sloppy use of a random number generator would also be fabulously funny -- "Every day at 6:32:13.345 every slot machine in Vegas pays out."b
'kay.
Um, am I the only one who gets the idea that a physicist worked something out on the back of an envelope, while at a bar drinking, and somehow a reporter decided that it was a 'story'?
I mean, figuring out what size of asteroid needs to go at what distance and what speed past the earth isn't really new stuff. Newton could have basically done it (if he had a more acurate number for the weight of the earth, and time to waste on something so ridiculous). It's kind of funny, I guess, but a friend of mine and I worked out the other day what length of a buckytube cable could hold it's own weight in earth's gravity (turns out it's a long way past geostationary orbit. Those things have a demented strength/weight ratio!). Since there is no way to make buckytubes any longer than micrometers, and they don't really work well as construction material, it's about the same level of aplicable relevance.
But since we're talking about it, when these guys want to get a giant asteroid towed past the earth, they are more than welcome to mount their spaceship by going up my bucky-tube elevator.
"Quantum Encryption (which really isn't an encryption algorithm, but a protocol for securely exchanging one time pads) looks like it is provably secure. It is based on the principle that it is impossible to duplicate a 2-state system exactly."
Quantum Encryption *is necessarily* secure. At this point, I must reach for my handy copy of The Code Book by Simon Singh (Copyright 1999, Anchor Books). -- incidentally, an excellent tutorial for non-security-experts who know about math and science.
If you were to read the quantum cryptography section, which isn't the strongest in the book, and as such can be a little unclear to people who haven't spent a considerable amount of time around quantum effects. To simplify, quantum systems of enrcryption are based firmly on the inability of an observer who has a 'tap' on a fiber in between sender and reciever to accurately measure quantum properties of a photon (specifically, the polarization) and thus transmit the same photon that she (the observer) has intercepted. She is bound to bugger up the transmission by observing it, and in fact to bugger it up in an easily verifyable way.
Now, anyone who knows any Quantum Physics knows that an observer who trys to record and then replicate exactly a quantum property is doomed. This has been shown mathematically, and verified experimentally. It is not, really, in dispute any more.
RSA encryption, on the other hand, like all prior encryption methods is based on mathematical jiggery-pokery. It's fabulously intelligent jiggery-pokery, so it is very difficult to break. Possibly, there is no realistic-time solution, but that has *not* been proven in a convincing manner that I am aware of. It is still possible that someone could come up with some mathematical jiggery-pokery which is slightly more clever, and RSA would end up looking as trival as the old Caesar code (Once again, thank you Simon Singh). Alternatively, Quantum Computers may be able to accellerate processing time sufficiently to brute-force analyse RSA.
It is no longer feasible for the human race to react to virii and bacteria through evolution. They do that better than us. Micro-mutations inside of a generation can cause some ability to react better to parasites such as these. However, in the space of one human generation, the number of bacterial (to say nothing of virii which are potentially faster) generations many many orders of magnitude beyond that. Probably 7 or 8 orders of magnitude.
Also, for humans to respond through evolution, humans have to be subject to natural selection. This is not a good situation. Even if nature is cleverer, we are much nicer to the old, the weak, and the genetically disadvantaged. For us to react well to disease we would need to kill or sterilize Stephen Hawking (or allow him to die) to preserve "genetic strength" this is the type of thing that "clever" nature does. Please remember that nature is mean and horrible, and as much as you seem to hate antibiotics, they are heaps better than the "clever" solution.
Everyone tosses the word "natural" around as if it is necessarily superior. Natural is getting torn apart by lions. Natural is having fleas for your whole life. Natural is bad. Clever it's not. Please reflect on thoughts like this.
Cloning is really hard. Really really hard. This is an important thing to remember. There were hundreds of dolly-clones implanted and one ended up viable.
We have no method for specifically preventing the differentiation of a specific type of cell. It is not likely that there is a chemical or drug-related solution. That means that you have to clone someone, and cut off it's head at some stage.
If you do this in Utero, then you have big problems with bringing the quasi-child to term. Big problems. Chances are you couldn't prevent miscarriage. Even if you could, you would be stuck with a bunch of baby-sized organs in a rapidly mouldering corpse. This helps no one.
One more thing: Statement 2 is flawed. There is no way to prove that all sentience is located in the brain. The body is full of nerve cells, and there is considerable evidence that some of the other ones do wierd things. Also, the immune
system has a memory of sorts, so may be considered a type of extension to intelligence, all of this stuff is difficult to meter.
Stop watching Star Trek. You can't make clones that start life at the age of twenty.
Yeah. Isn't there a treaty still in force that was specifically designed to prevent militarization of space? I have forgotten what the full deal was, but this isn't a great idea, really.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't quite know what the rules are, but I assume that there must be laws governing the randomness of slot machines, no?
If not, it's basically the same as a casino using loaded dice -- casino employees could come along every x number of pulls and play each slot machine if it was guaranteed to win after that many pulls.
I bet that sloppy use of a random number generator would be fabulously illegal.
Although extremely sloppy use of a random number generator would also be fabulously funny -- "Every day at 6:32:13.345 every slot machine in Vegas pays out."b
'kay.
Um, am I the only one who gets the idea that a physicist worked something out on the back of an envelope, while at a bar drinking, and somehow a reporter decided that it was a 'story'?
I mean, figuring out what size of asteroid needs to go at what distance and what speed past the earth isn't really new stuff. Newton could have basically done it (if he had a more acurate number for the weight of the earth, and time to waste on something so ridiculous). It's kind of funny, I guess, but a friend of mine and I worked out the other day what length of a buckytube cable could hold it's own weight in earth's gravity (turns out it's a long way past geostationary orbit. Those things have a demented strength/weight ratio!). Since there is no way to make buckytubes any longer than micrometers, and they don't really work well as construction material, it's about the same level of aplicable relevance.
But since we're talking about it, when these guys want to get a giant asteroid towed past the earth, they are more than welcome to mount their spaceship by going up my bucky-tube elevator.
Quantum Encryption *is necessarily* secure. At this point, I must reach for my handy copy of The Code Book by Simon Singh (Copyright 1999, Anchor Books). -- incidentally, an excellent tutorial for non-security-experts who know about math and science.
If you were to read the quantum cryptography section, which isn't the strongest in the book, and as such can be a little unclear to people who haven't spent a considerable amount of time around quantum effects. To simplify, quantum systems of enrcryption are based firmly on the inability of an observer who has a 'tap' on a fiber in between sender and reciever to accurately measure quantum properties of a photon (specifically, the polarization) and thus transmit the same photon that she (the observer) has intercepted. She is bound to bugger up the transmission by observing it, and in fact to bugger it up in an easily verifyable way.
Now, anyone who knows any Quantum Physics knows that an observer who trys to record and then replicate exactly a quantum property is doomed. This has been shown mathematically, and verified experimentally. It is not, really, in dispute any more.
RSA encryption, on the other hand, like all prior encryption methods is based on mathematical jiggery-pokery. It's fabulously intelligent jiggery-pokery, so it is very difficult to break. Possibly, there is no realistic-time solution, but that has *not* been proven in a convincing manner that I am aware of. It is still possible that someone could come up with some mathematical jiggery-pokery which is slightly more clever, and RSA would end up looking as trival as the old Caesar code (Once again, thank you Simon Singh). Alternatively, Quantum Computers may be able to accellerate processing time sufficiently to brute-force analyse RSA.
Sorry.
It is no longer feasible for the human race to react to virii and bacteria through evolution. They do that better than us. Micro-mutations inside of a generation can cause some ability to react better to parasites such as these. However, in the space of one human generation, the number of bacterial (to say nothing of virii which are potentially faster) generations many many orders of magnitude beyond that. Probably 7 or 8 orders of magnitude.
Also, for humans to respond through evolution, humans have to be subject to natural selection. This is not a good situation. Even if nature is cleverer, we are much nicer to the old, the weak, and the genetically disadvantaged. For us to react well to disease we would need to kill or sterilize Stephen Hawking (or allow him to die) to preserve "genetic strength" this is the type of thing that "clever" nature does. Please remember that nature is mean and horrible, and as much as you seem to hate antibiotics, they are heaps better than the "clever" solution.
Everyone tosses the word "natural" around as if it is necessarily superior. Natural is getting torn apart by lions. Natural is having fleas for your whole life. Natural is bad. Clever it's not. Please reflect on thoughts like this.
We have no method for specifically preventing the differentiation of a specific type of cell. It is not likely that there is a chemical or drug-related solution. That means that you have to clone someone, and cut off it's head at some stage.
If you do this in Utero, then you have big problems with bringing the quasi-child to term. Big problems. Chances are you couldn't prevent miscarriage. Even if you could, you would be stuck with a bunch of baby-sized organs in a rapidly mouldering corpse. This helps no one.
One more thing: Statement 2 is flawed. There is no way to prove that all sentience is located in the brain. The body is full of nerve cells, and there is considerable evidence that some of the other ones do wierd things. Also, the immune system has a memory of sorts, so may be considered a type of extension to intelligence, all of this stuff is difficult to meter.
Stop watching Star Trek. You can't make clones that start life at the age of twenty.
Yeah. Isn't there a treaty still in force that was specifically designed to prevent militarization of space? I have forgotten what the full deal was, but this isn't a great idea, really.