Interesting concept but doesnt the slingshot effect use the gravity of planets (hence zero fuel ?) for travel ? Hence a path with nett gravity pulling the body to its destination would be of more use I think. Already the cassini mission used this principle to propel the craft to saturn (since the spacecraft lacked the fuel and the engines to propel itself to saturn).
The Hottest sector is the restaurant business my friend. Serving Hot food will always be hot. Computers or no computers : People gotta eat! So quit java and start a cafe instead.
"Suddenly, this "data" file is now containing a virus, isnt it?"
Well no. Its just and exploit and not a virus. Consider this : You use gimp to open a JPEG. Gimp crashes and gives root access to an attacker. Would you call it as "Gimp infected by a virus" or "Gimp has a buffer overflow and was exploited". Becase the former needs scanning of all JPGs with a virus scanner. The latter just needs a patch to patch the overflow.
Gravity is *not* a warpage of space time. All so far observed effects of gravity can be explained by considering dimesions that include space and time and visualizing it to be warped, so that object travelling in a straight line in the space-time geodesic are actually travelling in an ellipse. Warpage in space-time is just a cool way of thinking about and modelling gravity. Heck - no one authoritatively knows what gravity is made up of, they can only give you equations that can model gravity. So superconductors that do block (if they block) gravitational waves need not be singularities or black holes or gravity wells or ruptures in space-time or something like that. We just need a better theory to model gravity - thats all.
No doubt that the symmetry between Maxwell's equations and Einstein's equations is stark, but does this also mean that they are equivalent in meaning and applicability?. Not necessarily - They just have a high probability of indicating the same phenomena. Hence a starting point to explore for relations and experiments for a unified theory of everything.
Take for example boltzmann's entropy equations. He assumed arbitrarily (as a cute mathematical trick) quantization of his phase space. (This was before quantum mechanics was discovered). This is similar to various quantum derivations that planck introduced and finally was realized to be a unified universal truth that binds all systems made of independant particles. Symmetry came first. Unification later. Same case here - Symmetry exists, it is left to be seen if they are the same phenomena.
While I am not going out of the way to suggest that electromagnetic waves and gravitational waves are one and the same because the equation are symmetric, there are precedents for cases where symmetry was observed first and then a unified theory was proposed later.
-Dracken
Re:An even better solution...
on
DRM Helmet
·
· Score: 1
The Motion picture ass. of america and Recording industry ass. of america have proposed a novel solution. A chip embedded in the brain would blank out the nerves from the eyes and ears while viewing pirated content. Repeated offenders would be knocked unconsious.
Senator Hollings who tabled this proposal as a part of "stimulation of Education And Training for Special Hight Intensity Technology" (so-EAT-f-SHIT) bill argued that the new bill will provide "a shot in the arm for biotechnology, microelectronics, medical physics, broadband, webhosting, email, tcp/ip and ethernet" whose growth has been stagnating for the past two years. He further added "People think about the copyrighted movies they saw depriving the movie industry of a trillion dollar business due to repeat viewings of the movie"
Interestingly several quarters have supported the bill. In the sonicblue case, the appellants argued that a chip be the pre-requisite for buying a unit. This way people who dont watch advertisements could be "taught a lesson"
Ofcourse this technology had greatest support from a group which calls itself "World Service group for interesting offers in your mailbox". A spokesman said "Think about sending DO YOU WANT IT TO GROW BY 3 MORE INCHES!!!!! directly into a person's brain!".
In a related development Microsoft corp said that it had developed stable and secure software for such chips.
Is the time you are referring to, a notion of "its 11 O' clock" or are you referring to the actual abstract notion of time ?
The abstract notion of time, as of today, does exist. Crudely speaking it is defined as "an instant x is "older" in a scale than an instant y if the entropy of the universe corresponding to x is greater than the entropy of universe corresponding to y" This definition is based on the second law of thermodynamics and is accepted to be the only true notion of abstract time. And the second law has stood the test of time (no pun intended). Now this gives rise to the question if the second law is "correct". Well we dont know. We havent observed violations. So as of today time exists.
And of course there is quantum theory. Whose basic axiom says "Action" pervades the universe and is quantized. (Action is actually energy x time and it is distributed in chunks proportional to planck's constant). Have we observed a violation to the "quantization axiom" itself so far ? Well no. Is the therory successful ? Well yes. It has predicted things that have been checked out due to experimentation. So as of today time exists.
Moral of the story: Time is just not an illusion that physics guys are toying with. It is an actual parameter, an experimentally measurable quantity, which is well characterized and is a vital part of some basic theroies (that till today) characterize the universe pretty well. If you choose to define time as "20 mins have passed when I have the urge to pee after a beer" that notion is debatable:). If you want to dispute the parameter "time" in the second law and quantum axioms - well that notion _as of today_ is robust.
Mass *is* independant of gravity. Weight is not. Weight W = force of attraction due to earth which is proportional to PRODUCT of the two masses in question (m1 - the mass of the ball and m2 - the mass of the earth).
Now acceleration is directly proportional to W and inversely proportinal to m1, the mass of the ball. This is from newton's law: accleration = a = F/m Where F = force = weight here and m = mass of ball. This makes acceleration proportional to W/m1. m1 cancels out giving the same acceleration to balls of *any* mass that are dropped.
That is the beauty of the experiment. Objects of *all* masses (ignoring the air resistance) fall with the same acceleration towards the earth. This has Nothing to do with the ball being of negligible mass when compared to earth.
Repeat until enlightened - Whereever in the universe you go, mass of an object is the same. Weight might vary.
There has always been "cool facts" chemistry books. Isaac Asimov's "Building Blocks of the Universe" and "The Search For The Elements" were published in the early 60's. His style is absolutely engaging as he takes up elements in the periodic table, and tells a story about their origin, discovery, properties and uses. These books might be old (and slightly outdated as several elements have been discovered since then) but I still vividly remember the thrill that I had while reading them.
"Nature's Building Blocks" might be good - but sorry, its prior art. Isaac Asimov did it first - same style, same layout. IMHO there is no better scientist cum story teller better than asimov.
"perfect interoperability, which would allow products to be substituted for each other with no performance degradation, was a theoretical impossibility"
What a bunch of crap! Anything good that has ever happened in CS innovation was because of the compulsions of diversity in harware/software. TCP / IP anyone ? How would our dear professor like an internet that would work only between pentium 4s running Windows XP, since we are wasting our efforts achieving interoperability ?
"It would be surprising if two different products behaved exactly alike"
You moron! thats what we exactly want. I dont want the stuff shoved down my throat by microsoft - my co-worker loves it. So I use another product that behaves differently. I download OSS and change a bit of functionality here and there. I edit config files. *Why* on earth do you think everyone needs to use the same software with same features and settings ?
This guy is taking the sickening route every monopolists takes "Trust us with our soul. We know what is best for you. Its going to be chaos if we have competition. Never mind the fact that our product sucks, our licensing sucks, our support sucks and our pricing will suffocate you"
....are now going to add half the world to their mailing lists claiming that the klez virus subscribed them on their behalf and the spammers are helpless ?
Just getting paranoid after all that yahoo-has-a-bug-so-added-everyone-in-every-mailing -list incident. This is an excellent reason to wake up and propose a law that forces the spammers to make sure that somebody really *wants* to get on their mailing list.
Sure perfect encryption exists. But what about perfect key exchange ? How are you going to share your one time pad between the communicating parties making sure that it has not been eavesdropped on ?
The ultimate aim of cryptography research is *not* repeat *not* coming up with more and more wierd mathematical schemes to obfuscate data. Instead, it is to find a scheme to share a key between two people without anybody else getting hold of it. Given secure key exchange, unbreakable encryption is child's play.
How do you think RSA is used by most secure protocls ? Encrypting data through RSA throughout the communication session is naive. Faster and more practical methods encrypt a one time pad through RSA, transmit it and then use the one time pad to do private key encryption. (A rule of thumb is x bits if privatekey encryption is atleast as strong as 3x bits of public key).
Quantum cryptography should and will be used to share a one time pad. Since eavesdropping can be detected, one can make sure that the pad went through without anybody seeing it. After that the pad will be used for encryption.
The divine did being make an AMD, stick it in our heads and did ordain that it should be underclocked and cooled. esp while playing chess. Overclock it at your own risk!
[Dracken thinking deeply.....] But why cant human beings win against a computer in chess ?KAAAAAABOOOOMMMMM.........
> This begs the question: is the strategy that a human chess player would use also based on these > millions of tiny tactical evaluations, only so subtle that he's not aware they're going on in > the vast electrochemistry of his brain? Or is strategy discernable from tactics in a human > mind, but simply a subset thereof in a computer?
I am an avid chess player (and ofcourse a CS geek) and have wondered about and studied this before. While novices and intermediate players (and some strong ones) seem to evaluate moves based on a broad strategy, the really good ones (read grandmasters) more often than not, do some kind of pattern matching. They are able to look at the pieces on the board and based on the pattern of the pieces, they decide between a few moves that "occurs" to them. In essence, they are NOT unconsciously evaluating all moves, pruning moves that are obviously bad etc etc - This is how a computer plays (MIN-MAX algorithm, alpha-beta pruning in AI).
A strong evidence of this is, when players play simultaneous games. They go from board to board and based on the pattern they see on each board, they make good moves. They cannot afford to have a coherent line of thinking, evaluation, strategy and attack for *each* of the boards at all times. So it seems that it all boils down to some kind pattern matching. This I feel should be studied and believe that it is the essence of "intelligent" chess playing. -Dracken
The Skyscapers, Quake and the buildings are not the point. Neither is "computer as a machine helped us do things faster".
I believe computers and hence computer science has fundamentally changed the way we think about things. Our understanding about number, formulae, math, logic, limitation of logic, solvability of problems, information, security of information, storage, archival and dissemination of information, working of the mind, have all been influenced by the machine you see on your desk.
The engineered machine by itself is not the beauty - but the science it inspires is. Think steam engine - Nothing more than coal, a cylinder, a piston and water. But the puzzlement asto why it is not efficient lead to the discovery of thermodynamics, entropy, energy, gas laws, boltzmann equations, the first true definition of time, quantum theory, quantum mechanics and the only existing explanation of the universe (however imprecise it might be). The cylinder and piston is not the point - the science it inspired is.
I could rant and rave and go on and on. But somehow I feel uncomfortable when people see a computer and think - "nothing more than a machine to get and the net and see some p0rn"
There is no such thing as a centrifugal force. It is a common misnomer and a badly abused term. The only forces acting on the CD ROM disc are the centripetal force (directed radially inward) which spins the disc and the inertia of the disc itself which does not want to go in a rotational motion. If the centripietal force becomes too great, the disc simply rips apart.
Newton's laws of motion are applicable to only inertial frames of reference. That is if you are in an accelerating car - you cannot use newton's laws to calculate position, velocity etc of objects inside the car, because an accelerated frame of reference is not an inertial frame of reference. To remedy this - we introduce a pseudo force which acts on all the particles in the car. Since anything not travelling in a straight line is accelerating, centifugal force is a pseudo force introduced in rotational frames of reference - so that newton's laws of motion can still be applied.
The root is Indus. The river Indus which is called as Sindhu in sanskrit. Hence Hindu (the religion), Hindi (the language), Hindustan (the country). Hindustani or Hindu means people who live near the river Indus.
This scheme is going to be a roaring success, the calculation regarding ``the fraction of weekly wages, purchasing power parity'' blah blah blah notwithstanding.
75% of the people who download music from their sites are going to be Indian students in the US or software professionals in the US. Considering the fact that an average Indian is an Indian music freak and there are *********too********** many Indian students / SW professionals living in the Europe and the US and the fact that getting Indian music in gnutella is hard, even if the Indians living abroad download music the company is going to do brisk business. And of course there is this HORRIBLE skew in the distribution of wealth in India. 15% (read 150 MILLION/SW company owners/Yuppies) of people in India have unimaginable riches. For them 10 bucks is a pittance.
This is one of the most common mistakes people make. It is not going to be long till the government uses your drivers license to authenticate (makes sense doesnt it ?) Thats it - you are finished! The problem with biometric information is - once your biometric information is stolen / hacked / a rogue client created - you are screwed for life. Basically I have my face on my driver's license and your fingerprint and iris profile (or whatever other biometric data) on my card. Then I booze and drive my car.......
The guiding principle is this - Something that cannot be discarded should not be used for identification/authentication.
Okay, I meant m less than or equals k. (Slash thought that my less than symbol is a html tag bracket) If you are interested you might want to check out This paper - which surprisingly is old (1988).
It is interesting to note that atleast in theory, this problem has been well studied. There is this concept of ``secret sharing'' and ``information dispersal'' in cryptography where any information can be broken down to k chunks. Out of k chunks it is enough to recover m chunks to reconstruct the original data. The caveat is this - anything less than m chunks would not reveal even a bit of information. The k and m can be chosen to be any arbitrary numbers (ofcourse m = k )
In effect what this provides is redundancy (you can reconstruct the original data even if some links and stores are down) and security (not even a bit of data can be reconstructed without compromising atleast a particular number of stores) To make this practically possible we, as a community should have servers running in geographically diverse locations (just like the root servers) with many different flavors of OSes (so one exploit does not cause all the servers to be compromised) with strong authentication protocols.
Slashdot Mirror
Interesting concept but doesnt the slingshot effect use the gravity of planets (hence zero fuel ?) for travel ? Hence a path with nett gravity pulling the body to its destination would be of more use I think. Already the cassini mission used this principle to propel the craft to saturn (since the spacecraft lacked the fuel and the engines to propel itself to saturn).
-Dracken
The Hottest sector is the restaurant business my friend. Serving Hot food will always be hot. Computers or no computers : People gotta eat! So quit java and start a cafe instead.
-Dracken
"Suddenly, this "data" file is now containing a virus, isnt it?"
Well no. Its just and exploit and not a virus. Consider this : You use gimp to open a JPEG. Gimp crashes and gives root access to an attacker. Would you call it as "Gimp infected by a virus" or "Gimp has a buffer overflow and was exploited". Becase the former needs scanning of all JPGs with a virus scanner. The latter just needs a patch to patch the overflow.
-Dracken.
Just rocks floating in space, the planets are not. I shenshe a deep disturbance in the force - aah a planet!
Before starting off, I would like to post a link to this gem of a comment .
Gravity is *not* a warpage of space time. All so far observed effects of gravity can be explained by considering dimesions that include space and time and visualizing it to be warped, so that object travelling in a straight line in the space-time geodesic are actually travelling in an ellipse. Warpage in space-time is just a cool way of thinking about and modelling gravity. Heck - no one authoritatively knows what gravity is made up of, they can only give you equations that can model gravity. So superconductors that do block (if they block) gravitational waves need not be singularities or black holes or gravity wells or ruptures in space-time or something like that. We just need a better theory to model gravity - thats all.
No doubt that the symmetry between Maxwell's equations and Einstein's equations is stark, but does this also mean that they are equivalent in meaning and applicability?. Not necessarily - They just have a high probability of indicating the same phenomena. Hence a starting point to explore for relations and experiments for a unified theory of everything.
Take for example boltzmann's entropy equations. He assumed arbitrarily (as a cute mathematical trick) quantization of his phase space. (This was before quantum mechanics was discovered). This is similar to various quantum derivations that planck introduced and finally was realized to be a unified universal truth that binds all systems made of independant particles. Symmetry came first. Unification later. Same case here - Symmetry exists, it is left to be seen if they are the same phenomena.
While I am not going out of the way to suggest that electromagnetic waves and gravitational waves are one and the same because the equation are symmetric, there are precedents for cases where symmetry was observed first and then a unified theory was proposed later.
-Dracken
The Motion picture ass. of america and Recording industry ass. of america have proposed a novel solution. A chip embedded in the brain would blank out the nerves from the eyes and ears while viewing pirated content. Repeated offenders would be knocked unconsious.
Senator Hollings who tabled this proposal as a part of "stimulation of Education And Training for Special Hight Intensity Technology" (so-EAT-f-SHIT) bill argued that the new bill will provide "a shot in the arm for biotechnology, microelectronics, medical physics, broadband, webhosting, email, tcp/ip and ethernet" whose growth has been stagnating for the past two years. He further added "People think about the copyrighted movies they saw depriving the movie industry of a trillion dollar business due to repeat viewings of the movie"
Interestingly several quarters have supported the bill. In the sonicblue case, the appellants argued that a chip be the pre-requisite for buying a unit. This way people who dont watch advertisements could be "taught a lesson"
Ofcourse this technology had greatest support from a group which calls itself "World Service group for interesting offers in your mailbox". A spokesman said "Think about sending DO YOU WANT IT TO GROW BY 3 MORE INCHES!!!!! directly into a person's brain!".
In a related development Microsoft corp said that it had developed stable and secure software for such chips.
Is the time you are referring to, a notion of "its 11 O' clock" or are you referring to the actual abstract notion of time ?
:). If you want to dispute the parameter "time" in the second law and quantum axioms - well that notion _as of today_ is robust.
The abstract notion of time, as of today, does exist. Crudely speaking it is defined as "an instant x is "older" in a scale than an instant y if the entropy of the universe corresponding to x is greater than the entropy of universe corresponding to y" This definition is based on the second law of thermodynamics and is accepted to be the only true notion of abstract time. And the second law has stood the test of time (no pun intended). Now this gives rise to the question if the second law is "correct". Well we dont know. We havent observed violations. So as of today time exists.
And of course there is quantum theory. Whose basic axiom says "Action" pervades the universe and is quantized. (Action is actually energy x time and it is distributed in chunks proportional to planck's constant). Have we observed a violation to the "quantization axiom" itself so far ? Well no. Is the therory successful ? Well yes. It has predicted things that have been checked out due to experimentation. So as of today time exists.
Moral of the story: Time is just not an illusion that physics guys are toying with. It is an actual parameter, an experimentally measurable quantity, which is well characterized and is a vital part of some basic theroies (that till today) characterize the universe pretty well. If you choose to define time as "20 mins have passed when I have the urge to pee after a beer" that notion is debatable
-Dracken
Dont you realize that there are only three kinds of CS geeks ? Those who know basic math and those who dont.
-Dracken.
WHAT A SHOCKER!!!!!!
Mass *is* independant of gravity. Weight is not. Weight W = force of attraction due to earth which is proportional to PRODUCT of the two masses in question (m1 - the mass of the ball and m2 - the mass of the earth).
Now acceleration is directly proportional to W and inversely proportinal to m1, the mass of the ball.
This is from newton's law: accleration = a = F/m Where F = force = weight here and m = mass of ball.
This makes acceleration proportional to W/m1. m1 cancels out giving the same acceleration to balls of *any* mass that are dropped.
That is the beauty of the experiment. Objects of *all* masses (ignoring the air resistance) fall with the same acceleration towards the earth. This has Nothing to do with the ball being of negligible mass when compared to earth.
Repeat until enlightened - Whereever in the universe you go, mass of an object is the same. Weight might vary.
-Dracken
I found these reviews for Building blocks of the universe and Search for the elements
-Dracken
There has always been "cool facts" chemistry books. Isaac Asimov's "Building Blocks of the Universe" and "The Search For The Elements" were published in the early 60's. His style is absolutely engaging as he takes up elements in the periodic table, and tells a story about their origin, discovery, properties and uses. These books might be old (and slightly outdated as several elements have been discovered since then) but I still vividly remember the thrill that I had while reading them.
"Nature's Building Blocks" might be good - but sorry, its prior art. Isaac Asimov did it first - same style, same layout. IMHO there is no better scientist cum story teller better than asimov.
-Dracken.
"perfect interoperability, which would allow products to be substituted for each other with no performance degradation, was a theoretical impossibility"
What a bunch of crap! Anything good that has ever happened in CS innovation was because of the compulsions of diversity in harware/software. TCP / IP anyone ? How would our dear professor like an internet that would work only between pentium 4s running Windows XP, since we are wasting our efforts achieving interoperability ?
"It would be surprising if two different products behaved exactly alike"
You moron! thats what we exactly want. I dont want the stuff shoved down my throat by microsoft - my co-worker loves it. So I use another product that behaves differently. I download OSS and change a bit of functionality here and there. I edit config files. *Why* on earth do you think everyone needs to use the same software with same features and settings ?
This guy is taking the sickening route every monopolists takes "Trust us with our soul. We know what is best for you. Its going to be chaos if we have competition. Never mind the fact that our product sucks, our licensing sucks, our support sucks and our pricing will suffocate you"
-Dracken
It is surprising, but sadly it might violate existing copyright laws according to this Wired article.
-Dracken
.....Any of the posts today at slashdot. They are all either from dead slashdot readers or are from priests! I checked them all out!!!!!!
....are now going to add half the world to their mailing lists claiming that the klez virus subscribed them on their behalf and the spammers are helpless ?
g -list incident. This is an excellent reason to wake up and propose a law that forces the spammers to make sure that somebody really *wants* to get on their mailing list.
Just getting paranoid after all that yahoo-has-a-bug-so-added-everyone-in-every-mailin
Sure perfect encryption exists. But what about perfect key exchange ? How are you going to share your one time pad between the communicating parties making sure that it has not been eavesdropped on ?
The ultimate aim of cryptography research is *not* repeat *not* coming up with more and more wierd mathematical schemes to obfuscate data. Instead, it is to find a scheme to share a key between two people without anybody else getting hold of it. Given secure key exchange, unbreakable encryption is child's play.
How do you think RSA is used by most secure protocls ? Encrypting data through RSA throughout the communication session is naive. Faster and more practical methods encrypt a one time pad through RSA, transmit it and then use the one time pad to do private key encryption. (A rule of thumb is x bits if privatekey encryption is atleast as strong as 3x bits of public key).
Quantum cryptography should and will be used to share a one time pad. Since eavesdropping can be detected, one can make sure that the pad went through without anybody seeing it. After that the pad will be used for encryption.
-Dracken
The divine did being make an AMD, stick it in our heads and did ordain that it should be underclocked and cooled. esp while playing chess. Overclock it at your own risk!
[Dracken thinking deeply.....] But why cant human beings win against a computer in chess ? KAAAAAABOOOOMMMMM.........
> This begs the question: is the strategy that a human chess player would use also based on these
> millions of tiny tactical evaluations, only so subtle that he's not aware they're going on in
> the vast electrochemistry of his brain? Or is strategy discernable from tactics in a human
> mind, but simply a subset thereof in a computer?
I am an avid chess player (and ofcourse a CS geek) and have wondered about and studied this before. While novices and intermediate players (and some strong ones) seem to evaluate moves based on a broad strategy, the really good ones (read grandmasters) more often than not, do some kind of pattern matching. They are able to look at the pieces on the board and based on the pattern of the pieces, they decide between a few moves that "occurs" to them. In essence, they are NOT unconsciously evaluating all moves, pruning moves that are obviously bad etc etc - This is how a computer plays (MIN-MAX algorithm, alpha-beta pruning in AI).
A strong evidence of this is, when players play simultaneous games. They go from board to board and based on the pattern they see on each board, they make good moves. They cannot afford to have a coherent line of thinking, evaluation, strategy and attack for *each* of the boards at all times. So it seems that it all boils down to some kind pattern matching. This I feel should be studied and believe that it is the essence of "intelligent" chess playing.
-Dracken
The Skyscapers, Quake and the buildings are not the point. Neither is "computer as a machine helped us do things faster".
I believe computers and hence computer science has fundamentally changed the way we think about things. Our understanding about number, formulae, math, logic, limitation of logic, solvability of problems, information, security of information, storage, archival and dissemination of information, working of the mind, have all been influenced by the machine you see on your desk.
The engineered machine by itself is not the beauty - but the science it inspires is. Think steam engine - Nothing more than coal, a cylinder, a piston and water. But the puzzlement asto why it is not efficient lead to the discovery of thermodynamics, entropy, energy, gas laws, boltzmann equations, the first true definition of time, quantum theory, quantum mechanics and the only existing explanation of the universe (however imprecise it might be). The cylinder and piston is not the point - the science it inspired is.
I could rant and rave and go on and on. But somehow I feel uncomfortable when people see a computer and think - "nothing more than a machine to get and the net and see some p0rn"
-Dracken
There is no such thing as a centrifugal force. It is a common misnomer and a badly abused term. The only forces acting on the CD ROM disc are the centripetal force (directed radially inward) which spins the disc and the inertia of the disc itself which does not want to go in a rotational motion. If the centripietal force becomes too great, the disc simply rips apart.
Newton's laws of motion are applicable to only inertial frames of reference. That is if you are in an accelerating car - you cannot use newton's laws to calculate position, velocity etc of objects inside the car, because an accelerated frame of reference is not an inertial frame of reference. To remedy this - we introduce a pseudo force which acts on all the particles in the car. Since anything not travelling in a straight line is accelerating, centifugal force is a pseudo force introduced in rotational frames of reference - so that newton's laws of motion can still be applied.
The root is Indus. The river Indus which is called as Sindhu in sanskrit. Hence Hindu (the religion), Hindi (the language), Hindustan (the country). Hindustani or Hindu means people who live near the river Indus.
-Dracken
This scheme is going to be a roaring success, the calculation regarding ``the fraction of weekly wages, purchasing power parity'' blah blah blah notwithstanding.
;)
75% of the people who download music from their sites are going to be Indian students in the US or software professionals in the US. Considering the fact that an average Indian is an Indian music freak and there are *********too********** many Indian students / SW professionals living in the Europe and the US and the fact that getting Indian music in gnutella is hard, even if the Indians living abroad download music the company is going to do brisk business. And of course there is this HORRIBLE skew in the distribution of wealth in India. 15% (read 150 MILLION/SW company owners/Yuppies) of people in India have unimaginable riches. For them 10 bucks is a pittance.
Just trust me on this fellows, me I know
-Dracken
This is one of the most common mistakes people make. It is not going to be long till the government uses your drivers license to authenticate (makes sense doesnt it ?) Thats it - you are finished! The problem with biometric information is - once your biometric information is stolen / hacked / a rogue client created - you are screwed for life. Basically I have my face on my driver's license and your fingerprint and iris profile (or whatever other biometric data) on my card. Then I booze and drive my car.......
The guiding principle is this - Something that cannot be discarded should not be used for identification/authentication.
-Dracken.
Okay, I meant m less than or equals k. (Slash thought that my less than symbol is a html tag bracket) If you are interested you might want to check out This paper - which surprisingly is old (1988).
-Dracken
It is interesting to note that atleast in theory, this problem has been well studied. There is this concept of ``secret sharing'' and ``information dispersal'' in cryptography where any information can be broken down to k chunks. Out of k chunks it is enough to recover m chunks to reconstruct the original data. The caveat is this - anything less than m chunks would not reveal even a bit of information. The k and m can be chosen to be any arbitrary numbers (ofcourse m = k )
In effect what this provides is redundancy (you can reconstruct the original data even if some links and stores are down) and security (not even a bit of data can be reconstructed without compromising atleast a particular number of stores) To make this practically possible we, as a community should have servers running in geographically diverse locations (just like the root servers) with many different flavors of OSes (so one exploit does not cause all the servers to be compromised) with strong authentication protocols.
Just my 2 cents.
-Dracken