You're probably right, for most cases. It's entirely possible, though, for the law to be complicated for a legitimate reason (i.e., many precise steps are required). Take the issue of water rights, for instance, to a stream that flows through many people's land. Keeping everybody off of everybody else's back is a difficult job, and laying out exactly what can and can not be done to the stream (that may or may not affect things downstream) is a complicated issue that must be described in detail or people are going to get pissed. I'm not terribly familiar with the issue (IANAL) but it's easy to see where things could get very complicated very fast.
Which lawers are the ones/. people are up in arms about most of the time? Corporate stooges, for the most part -- a class of people that, IMHO, are the corporate equivilant of muscle-bound goons. Such people aren't interested in anything but getting a descision that is favorable to their company, or cowing someone into going allong with their demands. I have no intention of giving such people any of my respect.
Frankly, I don't extend my distrust of lawers/judges to (for instance) the supreme court. They might make a bad (imo) descision, but I trust them to be relatively reasonable.
I do think there are some serious problems, though. Under-representation in the courts is one of them. The typical stupid court descision is often a case of the big guy against the little guy. The little guy isn't going to know the ropes, may not have a lawyer in the same league as the corp. types, and so is likely to lose.
And yes, part of the problem is knowledge of technical issues. But it's they're not simple issues. And I don't care how philanthropic a small-time lawyer may be, they're simply not going to be motivated to take the time to understand the technical stuff as well as they do the law. This means that, in such cases, it's up to the defendant to know what's relevant, and explain it to his lawer. And he may not do a very good job at explaining the issues in language the lawyer can understand.
Add to the above mix a generaly different ideology (criminal behavior/porn/whatever is the greatest of evils vs. freedom is the greatest of goods -- oversimplified of course), and a background of laws enacted by clueless, poll-driven politicians, and you have an extremely difficult situation.
And thus eliminate one of the natural imunities to malaria.
Sickle-cell is a classic case of something that appears deadly (and, in fact, is, in homozygote form) but turns out to be an adaptation. This is why the condition still existed when people started studying it. According to the Hardy-Weinberg formula (a simple formula that predicts the spread of gene combinations in a population (e.g., the % of AA, Aa and aa) sickle-cell should have virtualy disapeared a long time ago. This confused scientists for quite some time, untill it was realized that the heterozygote case (Aa) was actualy selected for because it confered resistance to malaria.
I'm not arguing against the human genome project, and frankly I think Katz's article was reactionary & appeals to our baser impulses, but there is a strong argument to be made against genetic manipulation unless we're d*mn sure we know what we're doing.
Replace antiseptic w/ anesthesia (which came before antiseptic) and you have a real issue that was hotly discussed. Look at it this way: antiseptic may be what's necessary to operate succesfuly, but anesthesia is what's necessary to operate....
Katz seems to be espousing a very boring kind of luddism here -- shouting doom & gloom about a science that is unlikely to produce these negative consequences he talks about for quite some time. We have plenty of time to discuss this. Besides, with the irrational fear so many people have of GM food (not all of the fear is irrational, but much of it is) it's much more likely that this research will be stunted and shunned than that it will be as rampantly misaplied as Katz suggests.
"Ironically, one of the large reasons I use Windows 98 is because of it's kerboard-friendly design. The keyboard shortcuts are almost universal in every application."
If you're talking about standardization of keybindings throughout apps, yes, MS probably does handle that well (I don't use many Win* apps, so I don't know). The thing about *nix, though, is that you can bind many, many *more* things to keys.
For the past few months I've had to spend a lot of time (at work) in NT; before I always used *nix. Even now, I spend most of my time in Exceed. But this time with NT has been an excercise is frustration, trying to get the functionality I'm used to out of the interface. I've finaly arrived at something almost acceptable (mostly by getting rid of explorer shell and replacing it with a batch file, and using exceed/X for everything that doesn't *require* NT), but I've come to the conclusion that there is simply a lot of UI functionality/flexibility that simply doesn't exist in win* (even with things like litestep -- a shell replacement).
But on linux, running sawmill, I can bind WHATEVER I WANT to a key. Lisp code, scripts, commands, etc. I have hooks that will run lisp code to set up a window based on my prefs when it starts, multiple desktops (which one can have in win, with litestep, I know), etc. The only thing I'm missing is drag & drop (which evidently gnome/kde have, but I don't care about) and unified keybindings accross apps. That latter would be nice, but I have something better -- a command line and a shell designed to make the most of it (with pipes, back-ticks, etc.).
This is why I simply don't understand attempts to make linux more windows-like, or things like gnome & kde. I see the linux interface as an effective superset of win*. Sure, there are documentation problems, learnability problems (I refuse to say user-friendly) and the like, but not interface problems.
Naturaly, read this with the disclaimer that I'm a win* newbie and that I'm in exactly the reverse situation of all those people out there moving from win* to linux.
IMHO, being able to bind arbitrary wm/shell commands to a key is an essential window manager feature (though there are some that don't have it -- blackbox comes to mind). Having tried blackbox, e, fvwm2, 4dwm (irix), and (briefly!) looking at windowmaker, I will fight the wm holy war under the banner of sawmill.;) Being able to bind arbitrary lisp (including lisp to run shell commands) to keys is just _cool_ (even if I don't care for that ability in an editor).
(c) Retransfers. Retransfers of encryption items listed in paragraph (a) of this section to other end-users or end-uses are prohibited without prior authorization.
They seem to be trying to rule out GPL/BSD style licenses here.
(1) Encryption source code controlled under 5D002 which would be considered publicly available under Section 734.3(b)(3) and which is not subject to any proprietary commercial agreement or restriction is released from EI controls and may be exported or re-exported without review under License Exception TSU, provided you have submitted to BXA notification of the export, accompanied by the Internet address (e.g. URL) or copy of the source code by the time of export. Submit the notification to BXA and send a copy to ENC Encryption Request Coordinator (see Section 740.17(g)(5) for mailing addresses).
(2) Source code released under this provision remains of U.S. origin even when used or commingled with software or products of any origin, and any encryption product developed with source code released under this provision is subject to the EAR (see Section 740.17).
(3) The source code may be exported or re-exported to all destinations except Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, Sudan and Syria.
-----
* So does this mean that if a single line of the code is written in the US it's subject to this business? (see 2)
* And what's this notification clause (1) mean?
* I can't figure out what EAR is, but in section 740.17 which it refers to I find:
(f) Open cryptographic interfaces. License Exception ENC shall not apply to exports or re- exports of encryption commodities and software including components, if the encryption product provides an open cryptographic interface (as defined in part 772).
And below that in the definition of terms:
Open Cryptographic Interface. A mechanism which allows a customer or other party to insert cryptography without the intervention, help or assistance of the manufacturer or its agents, e.g., manufacturer's signing of cryptographic code or proprietary interfaces.
So all in all I'm not too positive on this, though I can't say as I really understand it.
Laws agains cybersquatting may not necessarily be a Bad Thing(tm), but I imagine that most of/.'s readers will agree that laws that lean toward the trademark holder rather than private individuals are not so good.
And much more important, IMHO, is the fact that it's setting up a conflict between an internationaly standard arbitration process (via ICANN, if they get things figured out) and a fractured, chaotic system in which local laws are made to apply.
"Eventually, one of these "baby bill" companies would come out the winner, while the rest of the Microsoft spinoffs wither away and die, and we are left back at square one."
I don't know that I buy this. If there are two of three (or better yet, four or five) OS companies with roughly equivilant market share, they are going to have every motivation to make sure that their software works with the software of competing companies. And (and this is what many people just don't understand) THERE IS NO TECHNICAL REASON FOR INCOMPATIBILITY! If compatibility with 3rd party software is a design goal of high enough priority it WILL happen -- if it couldn't the Internet never would have had a chance.
As it is now, people want it, but companies (M$) don't because it runs counter to their business goals. If the antitrust suit changes this dynamic then it will have been a success, IMHO. This is why I like the idea of cloning M$ (the multiple, identical, company option). But it's important that if this is done there are enough of them that even if a few fail, there will be enough left to significantly split market share. (It might also be important to make sure they can't collude to create a standard API that they don't share with 3rd party companies.)
I guess I'm just contributing to an off-topic thread, but....
"Ich bin Berliner" would have been correct. It was the "ein" that changed it from a statement about origin to saying that he was that particular type of pastry called a "Berliner" -- a jelly donut.
The only thing I can think of is that it's decrypted with a password (otherwise, the key to the encryption of the key would be unencrypted). If this is the case, how difficult would it be to reverse-engineer the encryption of the key? Then, given a password (even without it you might be able to crack the encryption), you can decrypt the key.
I hadn't even thought about getting it from run-time memory, but I have no idea how difficult that'd be.
The difference is that now these corporations care, because influence over the way things are handled can give them a competitive edge, and in other ways increase the amount of money to be made. In other words, the conflict of interest is much stronger now.
"Or are they simply saying that if they go to the trouble of describing the genome in a useful way, and packaging it up, that people will have to pay to get that package."
If this is what they're saying they'd be talking about copyright, not patents.
"How do you push around people who work for essentially nothing in their spare time? Quick answer: you don't. You have no leverage. If your system breaks, and they can't fix it quickly, you're more or less screwed. Even if you KNOW this will never happen, you can't prove it to a board of directors, can you? The simple possiblity that it could happen is enough to make you reject the open source concept."
Simple. You take all that money you would have spent on licensing & upgrades and either pay some company for that level of support (why do you think redhat has Alan Cox working for them?) or you hire someone in-house to do it for you. And you can do this (and have it done competitively) because everyone has access to the source.
When M$ talks about total cost of ownership they aren't entirely blowing hot air. You're not going to get that level of support from the OSS comunity for free. Of course, you aren't getting it from closed-source places for free either.
If the integral (as you put it) describes what we observe better, isn't it a better candidate for "reality" than the function itself?
Though to say one describes reality better than the other suggests that they aren't the same function at all. I think there's something else going on here. My take (though IANAP) is that he's saying that influence (rather than use the loaded phrase cause & effect) doesn't follow time, though it may appear to. To put it in terms of integration, time is not the apropriate variable to integrate with respect to, which is why there's a difference between the integral & the function itself.
Though frankly, he lost me when he started talking about a meaning inherant in a particular configuration, and how that meaning contributes to our perception of time.
The question is simple -- will it work better than babel? Babel sucks, sure, but it's sure useful when I'm know something has the information I want, but don't speak the language. For that sort of thing, I suspect that this would be very useful.
And if/when its use becomes widespread people might start writing to the meta-language. Not writing in it, necessarily, but, for example, being explicit on things that would confuse it. If that happens, then it really would work.
I won't argue that there's no innovation here, but it's ludicrous to say that the idea of purchasing an item with a single click is innovative. Anyone who is designing a shopping system is going to tell you that (one of the) goals is to minimize the number of pages & forms to fill out. One click shopping does nothing more than succede in that goal.
The innovation here is in the methods used -- the code behind the scene. And you know, there's already protection for that code: copyright.
Or perhaps you're going to tell me that they were innovative to come up with the oh-so-novel idea of using a database?
Gataca & Brave New World may have both dealt with the same basic theme (stratification of society through genetics) I wouldn't say that they're the same. BNW is far from an attack on genetic engineering & a class system. There's strong evidence for the idea that Huxley saw the class system he put forth, along with genetic engineering and drugs to keep people in line, as the ideal society.
Sure there's satire & critique in BNW, but it's more as if Huxley couldn't make up his mind which side of the fence to fall on.
It doesn't necesarily matter if you can change the date. If the time is set to five minutes, and five minutes after reading it the key is erased, changing the date isn't going to help. You've got to make sure the key isn't recovered off the disk somehow, though.
Hrm. I assumed this was similar to the notation that (e.g.) nmap uses. In which case it's the number of bits in the network portion. So/8 is class A,/16 is class B, etc. So the larger the number, the smaller the block.
I'm unclear on whether they're dealing with a single photon. At the begining they're talking about spin, and obviously that involves using single photons. But when using polarity, do the same rules apply?
If so, this seems extremely susceptable to man in the middle attacks. Sure, Eve will have problems listening in, but all she has to do is read the key and transmit a new one. She'll run into problems with verification (she'd have to fake that too) but that doesn't seem impossible.
Maybe when transmitting the fake key she keeps saying it's wrong until Bob gets the same bits right she did. Then Bob will tell Alice to use the same keys Eve got right. That would certainly generate a lot retrys, though, which would make Bob suspicios if he's paying attention.
Come to think of it, this must involve only a single photon, otherwise it'd be trivial divide up the light beam and send it through a set of filters in paralel. Then Eve could know the polarity without any of this nonsence... duh.
Frankly, while this may, under certain controlled situations, be useful, I'm having a hard time seeing how it could be born out in the real world w/ noise and turbulence, and human error.
My understanding is that IBM is going with the "linux as little brother to our OS" approach too. They intend to have their own OS (replacing AIX) that'l run on merced (and a bunch of other chips... !!) for super-high end machines and recomend linux for the not-quite-so-high-end stuff.
This doesn't bother me, frankly. They intend to support binary compatibility w/ linux binaries, etc. And so long as linux is around and not subjected to overpowering FUD (a little FUD is ok...) it will grow or not on its own merits. One of linux's greatest strengths is that it isn't subject to the market in the same way other OS's are.
I'm saying that a machine like that would actively discourage change. IMHO, it'd be like putting collective blinders on. It's not as bad as some of the "elective censorship" ideas, I guess, but it's certainly a step in that direction.
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You're probably right, for most cases. It's entirely possible, though, for the law to be complicated for a legitimate reason (i.e., many precise steps are required). Take the issue of water rights, for instance, to a stream that flows through many people's land. Keeping everybody off of everybody else's back is a difficult job, and laying out exactly what can and can not be done to the stream (that may or may not affect things downstream) is a complicated issue that must be described in detail or people are going to get pissed. I'm not terribly familiar with the issue (IANAL) but it's easy to see where things could get very complicated very fast.
Which lawers are the ones /. people are up in arms about most of the time? Corporate stooges, for the most part -- a class of people that, IMHO, are the corporate equivilant of muscle-bound goons. Such people aren't interested in anything but getting a descision that is favorable to their company, or cowing someone into going allong with their demands. I have no intention of giving such people any of my respect.
Frankly, I don't extend my distrust of lawers/judges to (for instance) the supreme court. They might make a bad (imo) descision, but I trust them to be relatively reasonable.
I do think there are some serious problems, though. Under-representation in the courts is one of them. The typical stupid court descision is often a case of the big guy against the little guy. The little guy isn't going to know the ropes, may not have a lawyer in the same league as the corp. types, and so is likely to lose.
And yes, part of the problem is knowledge of technical issues. But it's they're not simple issues. And I don't care how philanthropic a small-time lawyer may be, they're simply not going to be motivated to take the time to understand the technical stuff as well as they do the law. This means that, in such cases, it's up to the defendant to know what's relevant, and explain it to his lawer. And he may not do a very good job at explaining the issues in language the lawyer can understand.
Add to the above mix a generaly different ideology (criminal behavior/porn/whatever is the greatest of evils vs. freedom is the greatest of goods -- oversimplified of course), and a background of laws enacted by clueless, poll-driven politicians, and you have an extremely difficult situation.
And thus eliminate one of the natural imunities to malaria.
Sickle-cell is a classic case of something that appears deadly (and, in fact, is, in homozygote form) but turns out to be an adaptation. This is why the condition still existed when people started studying it. According to the Hardy-Weinberg formula (a simple formula that predicts the spread of gene combinations in a population (e.g., the % of AA, Aa and aa) sickle-cell should have virtualy disapeared a long time ago. This confused scientists for quite some time, untill it was realized that the heterozygote case (Aa) was actualy selected for because it confered resistance to malaria.
I'm not arguing against the human genome project, and frankly I think Katz's article was reactionary & appeals to our baser impulses, but there is a strong argument to be made against genetic manipulation unless we're d*mn sure we know what we're doing.
Replace antiseptic w/ anesthesia (which came before antiseptic) and you have a real issue that was hotly discussed. Look at it this way: antiseptic may be what's necessary to operate succesfuly, but anesthesia is what's necessary to operate....
Katz seems to be espousing a very boring kind of luddism here -- shouting doom & gloom about a science that is unlikely to produce these negative consequences he talks about for quite some time. We have plenty of time to discuss this. Besides, with the irrational fear so many people have of GM food (not all of the fear is irrational, but much of it is) it's much more likely that this research will be stunted and shunned than that it will be as rampantly misaplied as Katz suggests.
"Ironically, one of the large reasons I use Windows 98 is because of it's kerboard-friendly design. The keyboard shortcuts are almost universal in every application."
If you're talking about standardization of keybindings throughout apps, yes, MS probably does handle that well (I don't use many Win* apps, so I don't know). The thing about *nix, though, is that you can bind many, many *more* things to keys.
For the past few months I've had to spend a lot of time (at work) in NT; before I always used *nix. Even now, I spend most of my time in Exceed. But this time with NT has been an excercise is frustration, trying to get the functionality I'm used to out of the interface. I've finaly arrived at something almost acceptable (mostly by getting rid of explorer shell and replacing it with a batch file, and using exceed/X for everything that doesn't *require* NT), but I've come to the conclusion that there is simply a lot of UI functionality/flexibility that simply doesn't exist in win* (even with things like litestep -- a shell replacement).
But on linux, running sawmill, I can bind WHATEVER I WANT to a key. Lisp code, scripts, commands, etc. I have hooks that will run lisp code to set up a window based on my prefs when it starts, multiple desktops (which one can have in win, with litestep, I know), etc. The only thing I'm missing is drag & drop (which evidently gnome/kde have, but I don't care about) and unified keybindings accross apps. That latter would be nice, but I have something better -- a command line and a shell designed to make the most of it (with pipes, back-ticks, etc.).
This is why I simply don't understand attempts to make linux more windows-like, or things like gnome & kde. I see the linux interface as an effective superset of win*. Sure, there are documentation problems, learnability problems (I refuse to say user-friendly) and the like, but not interface problems.
Naturaly, read this with the disclaimer that I'm a win* newbie and that I'm in exactly the reverse situation of all those people out there moving from win* to linux.
IMHO, being able to bind arbitrary wm/shell commands to a key is an essential window manager feature (though there are some that don't have it -- blackbox comes to mind). Having tried blackbox, e, fvwm2, 4dwm (irix), and (briefly!) looking at windowmaker, I will fight the wm holy war under the banner of sawmill. ;) Being able to bind arbitrary lisp (including lisp to run shell commands) to keys is just _cool_ (even if I don't care for that ability in an editor).
Oh, and I forgot section (c) of 740.17:
(c) Retransfers. Retransfers of encryption items listed in paragraph (a) of this section to other end-users or end-uses are prohibited without prior authorization.
They seem to be trying to rule out GPL/BSD style licenses here.
Ok, so:
Sec.740.13 (e) Non-Commercial Source Code
(1) Encryption source code controlled under 5D002 which would be considered publicly available under Section 734.3(b)(3) and which is not subject to any proprietary commercial agreement or restriction is released from EI controls and may be exported or re-exported without review under License Exception TSU, provided you have submitted to BXA notification of the export, accompanied by the Internet address (e.g. URL) or copy of the source code by the time of export. Submit the notification to BXA and send a copy to ENC Encryption Request Coordinator (see Section 740.17(g)(5) for mailing addresses).
(2) Source code released under this provision remains of U.S. origin even when used or commingled with software or products of any origin, and any encryption product developed with source code released under this provision is subject to the EAR (see Section 740.17).
(3) The source code may be exported or re-exported to all destinations except Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, Sudan and Syria.
-----
* So does this mean that if a single line of the code is written in the US it's subject to this business? (see 2)
* And what's this notification clause (1) mean?
* I can't figure out what EAR is, but in section 740.17 which it refers to I find:
(f) Open cryptographic interfaces. License Exception ENC shall not apply to exports or re- exports of encryption commodities and software including components, if the encryption product provides an open cryptographic interface (as defined in part 772).
And below that in the definition of terms:
Open Cryptographic Interface. A mechanism which allows a customer or other party to insert cryptography without the intervention, help or assistance of the manufacturer or its agents, e.g., manufacturer's signing of cryptographic code or proprietary interfaces.
So all in all I'm not too positive on this, though I can't say as I really understand it.
Laws agains cybersquatting may not necessarily be a Bad Thing(tm), but I imagine that most of /.'s readers will agree that laws that lean toward the trademark holder rather than private individuals are not so good.
And much more important, IMHO, is the fact that it's setting up a conflict between an internationaly standard arbitration process (via ICANN, if they get things figured out) and a fractured, chaotic system in which local laws are made to apply.
"Eventually, one of these "baby bill" companies would come out the winner, while the rest of the Microsoft spinoffs wither away and die, and we are left back at square one."
I don't know that I buy this. If there are two of three (or better yet, four or five) OS companies with roughly equivilant market share, they are going to have every motivation to make sure that their software works with the software of competing companies. And (and this is what many people just don't understand) THERE IS NO TECHNICAL REASON FOR INCOMPATIBILITY! If compatibility with 3rd party software is a design goal of high enough priority it WILL happen -- if it couldn't the Internet never would have had a chance.
As it is now, people want it, but companies (M$) don't because it runs counter to their business goals. If the antitrust suit changes this dynamic then it will have been a success, IMHO. This is why I like the idea of cloning M$ (the multiple, identical, company option). But it's important that if this is done there are enough of them that even if a few fail, there will be enough left to significantly split market share. (It might also be important to make sure they can't collude to create a standard API that they don't share with 3rd party companies.)
I guess I'm just contributing to an off-topic thread, but....
"Ich bin Berliner" would have been correct. It was the "ein" that changed it from a statement about origin to saying that he was that particular type of pastry called a "Berliner" -- a jelly donut.
This has been bugging me too.
The only thing I can think of is that it's decrypted with a password (otherwise, the key to the encryption of the key would be unencrypted). If this is the case, how difficult would it be to reverse-engineer the encryption of the key? Then, given a password (even without it you might be able to crack the encryption), you can decrypt the key.
I hadn't even thought about getting it from run-time memory, but I have no idea how difficult that'd be.
The difference is that now these corporations care, because influence over the way things are handled can give them a competitive edge, and in other ways increase the amount of money to be made. In other words, the conflict of interest is much stronger now.
"Or are they simply saying that if they go to the trouble of describing the genome in a useful way, and packaging it up, that people will have to pay to get that package."
If this is what they're saying they'd be talking about copyright, not patents.
"How do you push around people who work for essentially nothing in their spare time? Quick answer: you don't. You have no leverage. If your system breaks, and they can't fix it quickly, you're more or less screwed. Even if you KNOW this will never happen, you can't prove it to a board of directors, can you? The simple possiblity that it could happen is enough to make you reject the open source concept."
Simple. You take all that money you would have spent on licensing & upgrades and either pay some company for that level of support (why do you think redhat has Alan Cox working for them?) or you hire someone in-house to do it for you. And you can do this (and have it done competitively) because everyone has access to the source.
When M$ talks about total cost of ownership they aren't entirely blowing hot air. You're not going to get that level of support from the OSS comunity for free. Of course, you aren't getting it from closed-source places for free either.
"cool" -> "people person"
;)
"arrogant macho attitude" -> "leadership potential"
So these cool, testosterone-loaded jocks are quite capable of making money -- they become suits.
If the integral (as you put it) describes what we observe better, isn't it a better candidate for "reality" than the function itself?
Though to say one describes reality better than the other suggests that they aren't the same function at all. I think there's something else going on here. My take (though IANAP) is that he's saying that influence (rather than use the loaded phrase cause & effect) doesn't follow time, though it may appear to. To put it in terms of integration, time is not the apropriate variable to integrate with respect to, which is why there's a difference between the integral & the function itself.
Though frankly, he lost me when he started talking about a meaning inherant in a particular configuration, and how that meaning contributes to our perception of time.
The question is simple -- will it work better than babel? Babel sucks, sure, but it's sure useful when I'm know something has the information I want, but don't speak the language. For that sort of thing, I suspect that this would be very useful.
And if/when its use becomes widespread people might start writing to the meta-language. Not writing in it, necessarily, but, for example, being explicit on things that would confuse it. If that happens, then it really would work.
I won't argue that there's no innovation here, but it's ludicrous to say that the idea of purchasing an item with a single click is innovative. Anyone who is designing a shopping system is going to tell you that (one of the) goals is to minimize the number of pages & forms to fill out. One click shopping does nothing more than succede in that goal.
The innovation here is in the methods used -- the code behind the scene. And you know, there's already protection for that code: copyright.
Or perhaps you're going to tell me that they were innovative to come up with the oh-so-novel idea of using a database?
Gataca & Brave New World may have both dealt with the same basic theme (stratification of society through genetics) I wouldn't say that they're the same. BNW is far from an attack on genetic engineering & a class system. There's strong evidence for the idea that Huxley saw the class system he put forth, along with genetic engineering and drugs to keep people in line, as the ideal society.
Sure there's satire & critique in BNW, but it's more as if Huxley couldn't make up his mind which side of the fence to fall on.
It doesn't necesarily matter if you can change the date. If the time is set to five minutes, and five minutes after reading it the key is erased, changing the date isn't going to help. You've got to make sure the key isn't recovered off the disk somehow, though.
Hrm. I assumed this was similar to the notation that (e.g.) nmap uses. In which case it's the number of bits in the network portion. So /8 is class A, /16 is class B, etc. So the larger the number, the smaller the block.
I'm unclear on whether they're dealing with a single photon. At the begining they're talking about spin, and obviously that involves using single photons. But when using polarity, do the same rules apply?
If so, this seems extremely susceptable to man in the middle attacks. Sure, Eve will have problems listening in, but all she has to do is read the key and transmit a new one. She'll run into problems with verification (she'd have to fake that too) but that doesn't seem impossible.
Maybe when transmitting the fake key she keeps saying it's wrong until Bob gets the same bits right she did. Then Bob will tell Alice to use the same keys Eve got right. That would certainly generate a lot retrys, though, which would make Bob suspicios if he's paying attention.
Come to think of it, this must involve only a single photon, otherwise it'd be trivial divide up the light beam and send it through a set of filters in paralel. Then Eve could know the polarity without any of this nonsence... duh.
Frankly, while this may, under certain controlled situations, be useful, I'm having a hard time seeing how it could be born out in the real world w/ noise and turbulence, and human error.
My understanding is that IBM is going with the "linux as little brother to our OS" approach too. They intend to have their own OS (replacing AIX) that'l run on merced (and a bunch of other chips... !!) for super-high end machines and recomend linux for the not-quite-so-high-end stuff.
This doesn't bother me, frankly. They intend to support binary compatibility w/ linux binaries, etc. And so long as linux is around and not subjected to overpowering FUD (a little FUD is ok...) it will grow or not on its own merits. One of linux's greatest strengths is that it isn't subject to the market in the same way other OS's are.
I'm saying that a machine like that would actively discourage change. IMHO, it'd be like putting collective blinders on. It's not as bad as some of the "elective censorship" ideas, I guess, but it's certainly a step in that direction.