Re:How many people have the computing power ...
on
A Mighty Number Falls
·
· Score: 1
There aren't patents on most forms of ECC. That's FUD from Certicom.
ECC has been around since ~1985 and as a serious crypto idea since the mid 90s. It's hardly new. We've attacked other systems in shorter order, like many multivariate quadratic systems, knapsacks, some forms of NTRU, etc.
I'm not saying there is proof that ECC is more secure, but it's not likely to be broken anytime soon. Of course, by that token, how do you know that RSA-4096 isn't broken next week?
You're right, I don't spend all my time petitioning the government for solutions to problems.
However, Al Gore [and peeps like him] claim to be "on the ball." It's their job, apparently, to be a champion of change for the climate. Last I checked, doing talks for profit all around the world [further contributing to pollution I might add] is not really change. It's noise.
You're right though. And frankly I wish I had the time. I keep myself busy with other things [work, music, etc] that I don't have the nights to just waste away at a city meeting hoping I get a chance to address the floor *and* that my suggestions are taking into consideration.
But I also don't presume to be a champion for the environment either.
SNFS != GNFS. Factoring specific 1024-bit numbers of that form isn't always super hard.
That they pulled off a SNFS on a 1024 bit number is cool, but not the same amount of work for a GNFS against an 1024-bit RSA key.
Tom
Re:How many people have the computing power ...
on
A Mighty Number Falls
·
· Score: 4, Informative
That's not even the point. The algorithm used to factor 2^k - 1, is generally the SNFS which is a highly optimized variant of the NFS, even faster than the GNFS. To factor RSA numbers you need the GNFS.
That said, not all 1024-bit numbers are hard to factor, in fact you have about a 1 in 300 chance of pulling 1024-bit prime out of your ass. The trick here is that RSA numbers are random and have less algebraic structure than Mersenne numbers.
Of course, with all that said, people should be using ECC anyways.
I agree that the common folk should do more. However, my point is, if he were truly some crusader for the little guy getting the message out and fighting the big bad evil system, he'd actually fight a fight or two for the little guy.
To me, his movies, speeches and other things are nothing more than bullshit posturing. His message may be true, but it's definitely unimportant.
Um like I give a rats ass. Dude is telling us that fuel is limited, that pollution is bad, and we ought to shape up. No shit. I don't need some mansion owning, SUV driving, capitalist pig to tell me that.
Where are my damn bus routes? Where are the tax breaks for telecommuting? Where are the tariffs on waste production? etc, etc, etc.
It's one thing to sit there all pretty with a slide show spelling out the obvious. It's another to get real action engaged. And since I caved and bought a car anyways, I don't really care what humanity does. Yipee apathy.
If Al Gore [or any other liberal hippie] were really a hero, he'd come to Ottawa, and get bus routes to the major tech centres [like Kanata North]. Fight for the little guy [re: me] like a good guy (tm) is supposed to.
This is like proving a negative [well sorta]. We're supposed to prove that there is no [significant] connection [that we can or should do anything about] between what we do and how the climate reacts. So instead you people say well if we're wrong disprove it.
That's like [not exactly but similar] to saying well if you're sure there is no god, go prove it.
The problem I have with climatologists [???] is that they overlook trivial solutions [or at least steps in the right direction] and go directly for whatever will ensure they get the most hype, audience, and at the end of the day, salary.
Is it more reasonable to increase mass transit ridership in places where it's lacking, or disallow people owning their own cars? Is it reasonable to fly all over the world for meetings, if you buy carbon credits? etc, etc, etc.
I for one, would gladly take a bus to work if there was a route that didn't take 50 minutes (it's a 6 minute drive), that is, after the 7 minute walk to the bus stop. Hell, I'd stop going to work everyday if my boss and company let me telecommute.
But telling people to put more busses in a city is too obvious and tame a suggestion. How can you sell film prints and books if you are suggesting things that are merely common sense?
There is already subscription radio, it's called XM and Sirius. And here's the kicker, they have advertisements as well.
A large part of the problem for TV anyways, is the huge costs with making a show. The amount wasted on actors salaries, licensing characters or likeness, etc, etc, etc. We've become a society that rewards an actor millions of dollars a year, to play some jackass on a 40 minute show, 20 times a year. Yet what do we pay teachers? Doctors? Airline pilots? etc...If the public just stopped eating out of their hands we'd have a say again. Imagine if NBC [or whomever] setup some show with the shiny A-listers, costing millions per episode, and nobody watched it out of frustration? That'd be awesome.
Canada is getting worse, by 2009 the number of ads per hour will be unlimited on cable and digital TV. This will let the stations basically fill up an hour with the same zantec commercial over and over and over.
For my part, I already watch no prime time TV. I PVR shows like law and order [the older series], star trek, etc. Skip over the ads. But more importantly, I don't watch "must see TV," and even more importantly, their advertisements.
If only more people could have some self-control and not have to be lulled into the grind of endless plothole ridden diatribes they call prime time television we'd have more quality arts and entertainment....
Radio is randomly good in my experience. Usually on my ride to work I can get 1-2 songs [it's only a 6 minute drive] and the start of the news. Today I got 1 song and 4 mins of banter. Radio jocks have about as much personality as a lit sparkler. If I wanted to hear some liberal jackass's take on things going on in the world I'd tune into CBC radio and catch the news.
No offense to the 88.5 live crew, but I honestly don't care about the world or your opinions about it. I want to listen to music. And not "get out of debt" commercials, as they're annoying and depressing.
Usually on my commute if I hear radio jocks, I just turn the thing off or go to my MP3 cd. I couldn't imagine listening to the radio at home though. Just so annoying compared to my ever growing CD/mp3 collection.
You're totally free and clear to rip characters, plot devices, musical phrases, etc. It's when you substantially copy it that it becomes a problem. If you weren't allowed to use bits and pieces from previous productions society as a whole would halt.
As for the entire screenplay being written "clean house." That's still a violation. It'd be like cam cording the movie.
ODF isn't a wrapper around binary data. It's a zip'ed archive of XML files. All of the text and styles are in plaintext english. It's also very verbose [which is also a downside]. OOo isn't perfect, but it's at least "open."
Um, I actually agree with your comment about why fund wars. As for art, that's culture and for the most part society does benefit from it (why learn to read, when there is nothing to read about?). I know where you're going. And as I said yesterday (OMG I love repeating myself...) NOT EVERYTHING IS BLACK AND WHITE.
I agree that some long term funding and risks are a good idea. However, many of these problems do not really come up in "the real world." So you have to balance what a few want with what many need.
Many people can use affordable and effective medicine. Few people can use answers to abstract mathematical problems. Does knowing the number of manifold dissections possible of an n-space tori really help my kid recover from pneumonia? Does it teach my nephew to read? Those are the questions you should be asking yourself.
And in a way we DO fund it. Ever seen a state funded college or uni? That's from tax money, and it's also the perfect place to ponder that sort of stuff. While you're a student that is.
Schools [as in for kids], uni, hospitals, and the like are ALREADY underfunded TODAY.
Dropping money on highly esoteric reading problems like turing machines is just as bad as funneling it to Haliburton. It's inappropriate and not in the best interests of society. You're right, who knows where 3 colour TM theory may take us. However, it's more likely that funding medical research, or other applied sciences will result in benefits.
In this case I have to agree with the others. This is just an excuse to get Mathematica and NKS back in the press.
For the benefit of society we should be funding research that can best serve society. And not in the idiocracy style of penis pills and hair growth treatments [hehehehehehe].
Point is, as nice as it's to know about the TM thingy [whatever this is], it's very far removed from anything that can help people.
Put it this way, you can either fund a local school, health care, research into cancer treatment [or whatever],..., or you can pay someone to solve a math puzzle that will please 0.01% of the population at best.
My point is beyond that though. I'm saying they both don't speak the language and don't know what they're doing. When I was at AMD dealing with their outsourced bullshit tech support, they ALWAYS did more harm than good. Simple things like changing/reseting passwords or creating accounts always resulted in the wrong result being produced (had my email account deactivated once or twice).
Just because they went to school doesn't actually mean they're smart. Standards [both academically and personally] vary. I'm more impressed by people who can do, rather than talk about doing.
And there-in lies the rub. The business units which created Visual Studio, Encarta,.net, etc... shouldn't be tied to a specific platform. They are, because there sole job is to prop up the OS which they use to lock customers into a particular regime of software.
If MSFT competed solely on merits they would open up the individual tools to any market they could sell them in.
I'd also point out that they could make a tidy profit on things like Visual Studio, if they invested more time in it and didn't just settle for whatever was required for a MSFT lockin [e.g. the MSVC C compiler sucks].
Bah, anecdotal at best. When I was in college, I saw the whole spectrum of students cheating, and studying hard. I was just as likely to see an Asian cheating on a lab as a white dude. Just like I was likely to see a white dude head home early to study just like an Asian.
At anyrate, anyone who thinks that passing exams equates with being the best in the field is sadly mistaken. Usually, being good at your work is a product of having studied, which coincidentally leads to decent marks. But I've seen a fair number of straight A students who couldn't [or wouldn't] venture off on their own to do something that wasn't programmed into them.
Where did I say lifetime? I said probation. Usually probation has a term, it's not for life. Being banned for 1-5 years from using a computer isn't the end of your life and would definitely serve as a punishment for the crime.
I can't believe how many unreasonable people there are on slashdot these days. Things are either one extreme or the fucking other. Grow the fuck up you halfwit.
Isn't it possible to not jail people AND not severely cruelly punish them?
I can't imagine what it's like to live in your world where the colours are so vivid and the sounds so extreme. Does your stereo only have two settings? 200dB and off?
I agree, but I also think both Canada and the USA could do more to mend fences. TN-1 applications are a very small step in the right direction for two countries which are supposed to be buddies.
I hate that every time I went to the US for a meeting I was treated like an illegal alien trying to subvert the economy. I don't blame the states though, I blame Canada for not putting up a fight. In all honesty we should really have some more accommodating form of worker exchange. Cuz don't tell me that americans wouldn't work in Canada if given the chance.
I think like most others we find it annoying that we have to compete for H1-Bs from mostly unqualified Indian employees who in all honestly probably don't add much to society. And before anyone brands me a biggot, I've worked with my share of fresh off the boat Indians and Asians, and without failure the vast majority are a pain in the ass to work with. They don't speak the language, are often not fully trained, have their own attitudes/values that often conflict etc.
That's not to say the more educated, or at least home grown asians/indians are that bad. Almost all of them are professional and a pleasure to work with.
Point is, at least with Cannucks heading south you can trust that we speak the damn language and our schools aren't that much different.
There is a reason why it's called a punishment. I think given the choice between probation with terms and prison I'd rather probation. Provided the probation period actually ended in a reasonable amount of time.
As others have pointed out most recipients of copied software could easily be fined with a 150% charge for the software and they'd learn their lesson. Prison/probation sentences would be reserved for the distributors.
Of course another smart idea would be to adapt business models to match the circumstances. In many cases, for example, games, a reserve system would mean they get paid, the market chooses what they want and there is no such thing as piracy anymore. E.g., delay the release until $X dollars are collected. Then just give the game out. If you don't collect $X dollars, obviously demand wasn't there (potentially ride the loss, give out the game and use it to entice another round of contributors).
I can name many jobs that don't need a computer (that is capable of P2P piracy)
- Chef - Airline Pilot - Musician - Artist - Writer - Construction worker - Athlete - Gardener - Life Guard - Flight attendant - Mathematics professor - Doctor -...
I don't think equating "integrated circuit" with computer is reasonable nor what a court would do. Recall Kevin Mitnicks situation? I'm sure he was allowed to own a calculator, heck I'd even venture to say a phone. It was laptops and desktops he wasn't allowed to have. And yet he still managed to write books and host a radio show during that time.
Slashdot Mirror
There aren't patents on most forms of ECC. That's FUD from Certicom.
ECC has been around since ~1985 and as a serious crypto idea since the mid 90s. It's hardly new. We've attacked other systems in shorter order, like many multivariate quadratic systems, knapsacks, some forms of NTRU, etc.
I'm not saying there is proof that ECC is more secure, but it's not likely to be broken anytime soon. Of course, by that token, how do you know that RSA-4096 isn't broken next week?
Tom
It's called multiplication.
Two people working 1 hour is 2 man hours.
Two computers working 1 hour is 2 cpu hours.
Yay! math is fun!
You're right, I don't spend all my time petitioning the government for solutions to problems.
However, Al Gore [and peeps like him] claim to be "on the ball." It's their job, apparently, to be a champion of change for the climate. Last I checked, doing talks for profit all around the world [further contributing to pollution I might add] is not really change. It's noise.
You're right though. And frankly I wish I had the time. I keep myself busy with other things [work, music, etc] that I don't have the nights to just waste away at a city meeting hoping I get a chance to address the floor *and* that my suggestions are taking into consideration.
But I also don't presume to be a champion for the environment either.
Tom
SNFS != GNFS. Factoring specific 1024-bit numbers of that form isn't always super hard.
That they pulled off a SNFS on a 1024 bit number is cool, but not the same amount of work for a GNFS against an 1024-bit RSA key.
Tom
That's not even the point. The algorithm used to factor 2^k - 1, is generally the SNFS which is a highly optimized variant of the NFS, even faster than the GNFS. To factor RSA numbers you need the GNFS.
That said, not all 1024-bit numbers are hard to factor, in fact you have about a 1 in 300 chance of pulling 1024-bit prime out of your ass. The trick here is that RSA numbers are random and have less algebraic structure than Mersenne numbers.
Of course, with all that said, people should be using ECC anyways.
Tom
I agree that the common folk should do more. However, my point is, if he were truly some crusader for the little guy getting the message out and fighting the big bad evil system, he'd actually fight a fight or two for the little guy.
To me, his movies, speeches and other things are nothing more than bullshit posturing. His message may be true, but it's definitely unimportant.
Tom
Um like I give a rats ass. Dude is telling us that fuel is limited, that pollution is bad, and we ought to shape up. No shit. I don't need some mansion owning, SUV driving, capitalist pig to tell me that.
Where are my damn bus routes? Where are the tax breaks for telecommuting? Where are the tariffs on waste production? etc, etc, etc.
It's one thing to sit there all pretty with a slide show spelling out the obvious. It's another to get real action engaged. And since I caved and bought a car anyways, I don't really care what humanity does. Yipee apathy.
If Al Gore [or any other liberal hippie] were really a hero, he'd come to Ottawa, and get bus routes to the major tech centres [like Kanata North]. Fight for the little guy [re: me] like a good guy (tm) is supposed to.
Tom
This is like proving a negative [well sorta]. We're supposed to prove that there is no [significant] connection [that we can or should do anything about] between what we do and how the climate reacts. So instead you people say well if we're wrong disprove it.
That's like [not exactly but similar] to saying well if you're sure there is no god, go prove it.
The problem I have with climatologists [???] is that they overlook trivial solutions [or at least steps in the right direction] and go directly for whatever will ensure they get the most hype, audience, and at the end of the day, salary.
Is it more reasonable to increase mass transit ridership in places where it's lacking, or disallow people owning their own cars? Is it reasonable to fly all over the world for meetings, if you buy carbon credits? etc, etc, etc.
I for one, would gladly take a bus to work if there was a route that didn't take 50 minutes (it's a 6 minute drive), that is, after the 7 minute walk to the bus stop. Hell, I'd stop going to work everyday if my boss and company let me telecommute.
But telling people to put more busses in a city is too obvious and tame a suggestion. How can you sell film prints and books if you are suggesting things that are merely common sense?
Right. I forgot, Al Gore is in it for the world.
Tom
There is already subscription radio, it's called XM and Sirius. And here's the kicker, they have advertisements as well.
A large part of the problem for TV anyways, is the huge costs with making a show. The amount wasted on actors salaries, licensing characters or likeness, etc, etc, etc. We've become a society that rewards an actor millions of dollars a year, to play some jackass on a 40 minute show, 20 times a year. Yet what do we pay teachers? Doctors? Airline pilots? etc...If the public just stopped eating out of their hands we'd have a say again. Imagine if NBC [or whomever] setup some show with the shiny A-listers, costing millions per episode, and nobody watched it out of frustration? That'd be awesome.
Canada is getting worse, by 2009 the number of ads per hour will be unlimited on cable and digital TV. This will let the stations basically fill up an hour with the same zantec commercial over and over and over.
For my part, I already watch no prime time TV. I PVR shows like law and order [the older series], star trek, etc. Skip over the ads. But more importantly, I don't watch "must see TV," and even more importantly, their advertisements.
If only more people could have some self-control and not have to be lulled into the grind of endless plothole ridden diatribes they call prime time television we'd have more quality arts and entertainment....
Tom
Radio is randomly good in my experience. Usually on my ride to work I can get 1-2 songs [it's only a 6 minute drive] and the start of the news. Today I got 1 song and 4 mins of banter. Radio jocks have about as much personality as a lit sparkler. If I wanted to hear some liberal jackass's take on things going on in the world I'd tune into CBC radio and catch the news.
No offense to the 88.5 live crew, but I honestly don't care about the world or your opinions about it. I want to listen to music. And not "get out of debt" commercials, as they're annoying and depressing.
Usually on my commute if I hear radio jocks, I just turn the thing off or go to my MP3 cd. I couldn't imagine listening to the radio at home though. Just so annoying compared to my ever growing CD/mp3 collection.
Tom
Congrats. You're a parent.
Seriously, the number of "guardians" who forget that they set the rules, not the kid, is amazing.
I'm sure your stepdaughter is doing just fine with the punishment, and it's neither cruel nor unusual [well by the definition of law I guess].
Kudos for doing what's right.
Tom
You're totally free and clear to rip characters, plot devices, musical phrases, etc. It's when you substantially copy it that it becomes a problem. If you weren't allowed to use bits and pieces from previous productions society as a whole would halt.
As for the entire screenplay being written "clean house." That's still a violation. It'd be like cam cording the movie.
Tom
AMD doesn't fab their GPUs. They use TMSC for that. AMD has enough problem keeping up with demand on the CPUs to be busy with GPUs.
Tom
ODF isn't a wrapper around binary data. It's a zip'ed archive of XML files. All of the text and styles are in plaintext english. It's also very verbose [which is also a downside]. OOo isn't perfect, but it's at least "open."
To
Um, I actually agree with your comment about why fund wars. As for art, that's culture and for the most part society does benefit from it (why learn to read, when there is nothing to read about?). I know where you're going. And as I said yesterday (OMG I love repeating myself...) NOT EVERYTHING IS BLACK AND WHITE.
I agree that some long term funding and risks are a good idea. However, many of these problems do not really come up in "the real world." So you have to balance what a few want with what many need.
Many people can use affordable and effective medicine. Few people can use answers to abstract mathematical problems. Does knowing the number of manifold dissections possible of an n-space tori really help my kid recover from pneumonia? Does it teach my nephew to read? Those are the questions you should be asking yourself.
And in a way we DO fund it. Ever seen a state funded college or uni? That's from tax money, and it's also the perfect place to ponder that sort of stuff. While you're a student that is.
Tom
Schools [as in for kids], uni, hospitals, and the like are ALREADY underfunded TODAY.
Dropping money on highly esoteric reading problems like turing machines is just as bad as funneling it to Haliburton. It's inappropriate and not in the best interests of society. You're right, who knows where 3 colour TM theory may take us. However, it's more likely that funding medical research, or other applied sciences will result in benefits.
In this case I have to agree with the others. This is just an excuse to get Mathematica and NKS back in the press.
Tom
For the benefit of society we should be funding research that can best serve society. And not in the idiocracy style of penis pills and hair growth treatments [hehehehehehe].
..., or you can pay someone to solve a math puzzle that will please 0.01% of the population at best.
Point is, as nice as it's to know about the TM thingy [whatever this is], it's very far removed from anything that can help people.
Put it this way, you can either fund a local school, health care, research into cancer treatment [or whatever],
Tom
My point is beyond that though. I'm saying they both don't speak the language and don't know what they're doing. When I was at AMD dealing with their outsourced bullshit tech support, they ALWAYS did more harm than good. Simple things like changing/reseting passwords or creating accounts always resulted in the wrong result being produced (had my email account deactivated once or twice).
Just because they went to school doesn't actually mean they're smart. Standards [both academically and personally] vary. I'm more impressed by people who can do, rather than talk about doing.
Tom
And there-in lies the rub. The business units which created Visual Studio, Encarta, .net, etc... shouldn't be tied to a specific platform. They are, because there sole job is to prop up the OS which they use to lock customers into a particular regime of software.
If MSFT competed solely on merits they would open up the individual tools to any market they could sell them in.
I'd also point out that they could make a tidy profit on things like Visual Studio, if they invested more time in it and didn't just settle for whatever was required for a MSFT lockin [e.g. the MSVC C compiler sucks].
Tom
Bah, anecdotal at best. When I was in college, I saw the whole spectrum of students cheating, and studying hard. I was just as likely to see an Asian cheating on a lab as a white dude. Just like I was likely to see a white dude head home early to study just like an Asian.
At anyrate, anyone who thinks that passing exams equates with being the best in the field is sadly mistaken. Usually, being good at your work is a product of having studied, which coincidentally leads to decent marks. But I've seen a fair number of straight A students who couldn't [or wouldn't] venture off on their own to do something that wasn't programmed into them.
Tom
No offense, but there is a reason why people hate tech/call centres. They're fucking idiotic mumbling retards with a phone.
Maybe if they documented why H1-B candidates were better than the local talent people would feel better about it?
Tom
Where did I say lifetime? I said probation. Usually probation has a term, it's not for life. Being banned for 1-5 years from using a computer isn't the end of your life and would definitely serve as a punishment for the crime.
I can't believe how many unreasonable people there are on slashdot these days. Things are either one extreme or the fucking other. Grow the fuck up you halfwit.
Isn't it possible to not jail people AND not severely cruelly punish them?
I can't imagine what it's like to live in your world where the colours are so vivid and the sounds so extreme. Does your stereo only have two settings? 200dB and off?
Tom
I agree, but I also think both Canada and the USA could do more to mend fences. TN-1 applications are a very small step in the right direction for two countries which are supposed to be buddies.
I hate that every time I went to the US for a meeting I was treated like an illegal alien trying to subvert the economy. I don't blame the states though, I blame Canada for not putting up a fight. In all honesty we should really have some more accommodating form of worker exchange. Cuz don't tell me that americans wouldn't work in Canada if given the chance.
I think like most others we find it annoying that we have to compete for H1-Bs from mostly unqualified Indian employees who in all honestly probably don't add much to society. And before anyone brands me a biggot, I've worked with my share of fresh off the boat Indians and Asians, and without failure the vast majority are a pain in the ass to work with. They don't speak the language, are often not fully trained, have their own attitudes/values that often conflict etc.
That's not to say the more educated, or at least home grown asians/indians are that bad. Almost all of them are professional and a pleasure to work with.
Point is, at least with Cannucks heading south you can trust that we speak the damn language and our schools aren't that much different.
Tom
There is a reason why it's called a punishment. I think given the choice between probation with terms and prison I'd rather probation. Provided the probation period actually ended in a reasonable amount of time.
As others have pointed out most recipients of copied software could easily be fined with a 150% charge for the software and they'd learn their lesson. Prison/probation sentences would be reserved for the distributors.
Of course another smart idea would be to adapt business models to match the circumstances. In many cases, for example, games, a reserve system would mean they get paid, the market chooses what they want and there is no such thing as piracy anymore. E.g., delay the release until $X dollars are collected. Then just give the game out. If you don't collect $X dollars, obviously demand wasn't there (potentially ride the loss, give out the game and use it to entice another round of contributors).
Tom
I can name many jobs that don't need a computer (that is capable of P2P piracy)
...
- Chef
- Airline Pilot
- Musician
- Artist
- Writer
- Construction worker
- Athlete
- Gardener
- Life Guard
- Flight attendant
- Mathematics professor
- Doctor
-
I don't think equating "integrated circuit" with computer is reasonable nor what a court would do. Recall Kevin Mitnicks situation? I'm sure he was allowed to own a calculator, heck I'd even venture to say a phone. It was laptops and desktops he wasn't allowed to have. And yet he still managed to write books and host a radio show during that time.
Tom