The money is for the books being borrowed by paying customers (Prime members); and one per month at that, so while it's still possible to game the system, it'd be rather tricky.
This is true for Linux, it's true for OS X, it's true for BSD, and it's true for Windows. That's just the way computers work.
Not quite so. Don't know Vista, but on OSX, you can have your users home dir encrypted (by enabling FileVault), and while booting into sysadmin mode is ridiculously easy too, it still won't get you the files - they are protected using the password, so the only way is brute-forcing it (and if someone is actually turning filevault on, chances are they use >4 letter password).
I graduated the Warsaw University and I need to correct you on several points: * The university started winning almost every year in the recent years. It didn't do as well before - in the 80's and early 90's the CS program sucked big time due to lack of equipment, knowledge etc, so the imminent 'downfall' isn't really what's happening or will be. True, the education has gotten less strict, but the universities keep their standards. * You are confusing Poland and the Soviet Republic, regarding the jobs market for IT engineers. When the EU borders opened a couple of years ago, everybody estimated a lot of Polish programmers will 'escape' to Germany. They didn't, so they clearly have something to do here. There are a lot of big companies building software engineering centers in Poland - eg. Intel, Motorola, IBM, HP, Samsung, and recently Googl - many of those in low-level, high-profile, embedded software development. You might want to consider that one of the biggest STB providers, ADB, is actually a Polish company. * The Polish government _is_ crappy, however that doesn't really harm it's economy, which is quite fine.
I cannot comment on the newest recruitment system (which is weird) - never experienced it. Same goes for about 50% of the students of IT at Warsaw university, they get around the system being the finalist of IT Olympics. So we still get the best - don't worry;)
It's possible to map single bits of A and B to boolean variables (asume they are N-bit long), multiplication is equivalent o a logic circuit N^2 big, and the problem of finding a solution to a logic circut, i.e CIRCUIT-SAT is NP-complete; which roughly means that factoring is NP.
Most numerical problems are, so that's nothing new.
If one could find a solution, it's easy to demonstrate that it is working, for example by solving all contests driven by RSA. One does not need to actually reveal the algorithm, to prove that he has found it. (At least until appropriate government officials find him:).
It's bit harder to demonstrate that one actually found that P=NP, but if anyone said that he(she) broke RSA this way, i'd believe the other solution exists, too.
Symmetric cryptography is generally better in this situation, you don't have a 'public' key around so it is not possible to determine in polynomial time if the decrypted data is correct, so the brilliant solution won't help here. Of course if the encryption algorithm adds some checksums or has constant elements, or you had encrypted some plain text with a simple block algorithm, it might be easier (usual cryptoanalysis methods may be applied).
But, there is a greater problem that 'what if somebody finds it out and tells everybody?' - simply replace 'every' with 'no'.
Slashdot Mirror
The money is for the books being borrowed by paying customers (Prime members); and one per month at that, so while it's still possible to game the system, it'd be rather tricky.
This is true for Linux, it's true for OS X, it's true for BSD, and it's true for Windows. That's just the way computers work.
Not quite so. Don't know Vista, but on OSX, you can have your users home dir encrypted (by enabling FileVault), and while booting into sysadmin mode is ridiculously easy too, it still won't get you the files - they are protected using the password, so the only way is brute-forcing it (and if someone is actually turning filevault on, chances are they use >4 letter password).I graduated the Warsaw University and I need to correct you on several points:
;)
* The university started winning almost every year in the recent years. It didn't do as well before - in the 80's and early 90's the CS program sucked big time due to lack of equipment, knowledge etc, so the imminent 'downfall' isn't really what's happening or will be. True, the education has gotten less strict, but the universities keep their standards.
* You are confusing Poland and the Soviet Republic, regarding the jobs market for IT engineers. When the EU borders opened a couple of years ago, everybody estimated a lot of Polish programmers will 'escape' to Germany. They didn't, so they clearly have something to do here. There are a lot of big companies building software engineering centers in Poland - eg. Intel, Motorola, IBM, HP, Samsung, and recently Googl - many of those in low-level, high-profile, embedded software development. You might want to consider that one of the biggest STB providers, ADB, is actually a Polish company.
* The Polish government _is_ crappy, however that doesn't really harm it's economy, which is quite fine.
I cannot comment on the newest recruitment system (which is weird) - never experienced it. Same goes for about 50% of the students of IT at Warsaw university, they get around the system being the finalist of IT Olympics. So we still get the best - don't worry
well, if you do have to ask..
I, Abu Daba of Nigeria, Son Of the Lately Deceased General Daba, require your assistance in an enterprise of mutual benefits...
It's possible to map single bits of A and B to boolean variables (asume they are N-bit long), multiplication is equivalent o a logic circuit N^2 big, and the problem of finding a solution to a logic circut, i.e CIRCUIT-SAT is NP-complete; which roughly means that factoring is NP.
:).
Most numerical problems are, so that's nothing new.
If one could find a solution, it's easy to demonstrate that it is working, for example by solving all contests driven by RSA. One does not need to actually reveal the algorithm, to prove that he has found it. (At least until appropriate government officials find him
It's bit harder to demonstrate that one actually found that P=NP, but if anyone said that he(she) broke RSA this way, i'd believe the other solution exists, too.
Symmetric cryptography is generally better in this situation, you don't have a 'public' key around so it is not possible to determine in polynomial time if the decrypted data is correct, so the brilliant solution won't help here. Of course if the encryption algorithm adds some checksums or has constant elements, or you had encrypted some plain text with a simple block algorithm, it might be easier (usual cryptoanalysis methods may be applied).
But, there is a greater problem that 'what if somebody finds it out and tells everybody?' - simply replace 'every' with 'no'.
--
#sp
Signature under konstruktion.