The research was done as part of my Senior Honors Thesis, and is available from the university.
My advisor, Dr. Antonio Quesada, later published a paper (proceedings of the ACM, maybe?) wherein he discussed the sieve that we built, in very generic terms.
Basically, it involves going through and computing the distances between the composites in a special set and doing that over and over and over. But by simply determining if a number is going to be cancelled out or not is pretty simple: just run through the sets.
I wrote a paper back in 1990 about a prime number sieve that was basically an O(n^2) algorithm. It basically worked by finding out if numbers were composite, but the algorithm used could be "inverted" to tell you if a number was prime or not by telling you if it was composite or not. It was very well suited to parallel implementations, too.
Then the phone company should not let a phone with an unknown IMEI on the network.
That would discourage this whole thing.
And you've proven my point: making this illegal will do absolutely NOTHING to prevent people from stealing the phones. They're already on the wrong side of the law for stealing property and selling stolen property. One more log on the fire (short of cutting their fingers or genitals off) is not going to dissuade them.
a) Stealing something (a phone) is illegal. b) Selling something you've stolen is illegal.
So how is this law going to make a difference? What is MORE illegal about modifying something you've stolen? Is this going to somehow prevent people from selling stolen and modified phones because they could get caught when the phone connects to the network?
Also:
If you want to change the number on your phone, and you're not going to steal it (since you own it!), what's the harm?
If you want to change the number and sell the phone, they could simply require a notification to the buyer that the original number was X and the new number is Y.
[Offtopic] And as for the distribution... it's on the micro scale, not the macro scale.
And in addition to the politics, let's remember that greed also plays a major part... again on the micro scale (I seem to recall a problem in Somalia or Ethiopia where the warlords horded all the supplies foreign nations shipped in). [/Offtopic]
I've been doing some study of lightning, and have learned that lightning starts a great, great number of forest fires, and along with hail, a great amount of property damage.
I think this tps12 guy must live on an island in the Pacific where it only rains in the evening, and the inconvenience is that he can't have a barbecue when it does...
OK, I owe you an apology; I didn't know really how this was all organized (or not) to begin with; it's not your fault. I didn't find out about this till yesterday at about 5:00 pm.
6 of us showed up, wandered around until we kind of figured out who was who... but this guy MattRog was nowhere to be found. So maybe next time: provide some information about *WHERE* to meet in the place; the Virgin Megastore is big. How about next time the Barnes & Noble COMPUTER BOOKS SECTION! (That's a no brainer.)
Virgin BAD choice.
To the guy who made the comment about a bunch of/.'ers hanging around the "Virgin" store: I thought that was pretty funny, and so did the other guys who read it at the Apple Store with me (Thanks Apple of Easton!) Giving you a -1 was stupid.
END RANT
I met some nice guys, Matthew, Ben, Ross, Travis and Chris. They hung out at Fado's while I went home to see my family after a long grueling day of design documentation.
I wonder if we're ever going to get to the point where they figure out that *they need us* more than *we need them!* Really, there are plenty of things to do that are more interesting than sitting around and watching TV and/or movies.
Who knows? This could lead to a new baby boom! Or a less fat-dense population!
If I understand this right, MS is going to have to convince/coerce hardware manufacturers into providing hardware support for this DRM, at least to some degree.
What if folks got together and filed a class action lawsuit claiming monopolistic coercion, naming Intel and AMD (who I've seen are thinking this is a good idea) and Microsoft. Clearly, this whole nonsense is going to be a threat to open source OS's like Linux, or for that matter ANY new OS for a PC.
"I can't write an OS for this because they refuse to give me the information to run on this platform without signing away all my rights."
Since when does the Executive Branch (here represented by the FBI) get to exercise powers given to the Judicial Branch (the courts), in that it's the *courts* who decide the punishment?
This certainly does lack due process.
That was one of my first thoughts on reading the article.
I'm not the one who brought up "bad guys" someone posted it and I repeated it.
If you'd read my post, you'd've understood that while I think these measures might be necessary for the short term, I don't think it's a good idea for them to be permananent. The post I read before was asking why this is a bad thing if they're just out to get the bad guys.
The problem I'm bringing up is that while under this administration, I have no fear of being labeled a "bad guy", from a future administration I just might be considered a "bad guy".
That was my point. And then you apparently took a long drag on your joint and typed in your reply...
It's not that hard... it would be similar to a serial cable that puts the Rx/Tx lines onto a pair of Rx lines so that another computer could listen to both sides of a serial exchange. Not hard at all... it would just be a demdem instead of a modem.
Someone posted a comment that more or less said "Why is this a problem? They're not after *you*, as such; they're after the *bad guys*."
Well, yes, it is a problem. I'm all for going after the bad guys, but remember, if this crisis ever ends, these powers will *not* be retracted.
Government usually only gets bigger, not smaller. And they don't easily give up powers once they've been granted. Perhaps the way Congress should be drafting these laws is that they need to come up on periodic review (kind of like the statute for Independent Counsels). At least if we have to tolerate this potential invasion now, then it could be repealed after a few years when things calm down.
I think it's important not to bind the hands of the FBI too much, but at the same time, someone needs to be looking ahead to when this crisis ends.
Another potential glimmer of hope is that the next administration might be influenced to cause a review to be done as part of his getting elected.
One wonders if maybe Micro$oft has thought of (surely) or engaged in (anyone at M$ want to tell us) attempts to post code somewhat anonymously with the intent to make it less secure.
They do a pretty good job of doing it *un*intentionally with their own software, so one wonders how good (bad) a job they could do if they *REALLY* wanted to make something insecure...
Slashdot Mirror
The research was done as part of my Senior Honors Thesis, and is available from the university.
My advisor, Dr. Antonio Quesada, later published a paper (proceedings of the ACM, maybe?) wherein he discussed the sieve that we built, in very generic terms.
Basically, it involves going through and computing the distances between the composites in a special set and doing that over and over and over. But by simply determining if a number is going to be cancelled out or not is pretty simple: just run through the sets.
I wrote a paper back in 1990 about a prime number sieve that was basically an O(n^2) algorithm.
It basically worked by finding out if numbers were composite, but the algorithm used could be "inverted" to tell you if a number was prime or not by telling you if it was composite or not.
It was very well suited to parallel implementations, too.
Well, if he's in the UK, I suppose they could nail him if he ever enters the U.S., like the did with Syklarov.
I'm in the U.S.
My cell phone (Ericsson T19LX) has an ESN number on it. Is this the analogue to the IMEI number?
And just for phun, does anyone know of any tools (hw/sw) to use to talk to this phone or get any interesting info out of it?
Then the phone company should not let a phone with an unknown IMEI on the network.
That would discourage this whole thing.
And you've proven my point: making this illegal will do absolutely NOTHING to prevent people from stealing the phones. They're already on the wrong side of the law for stealing property and selling stolen property. One more log on the fire (short of cutting their fingers or genitals off) is not going to dissuade them.
a) Stealing something (a phone) is illegal.
b) Selling something you've stolen is illegal.
So how is this law going to make a difference? What is MORE illegal about modifying something you've stolen? Is this going to somehow prevent people from selling stolen and modified phones because they could get caught when the phone connects to the network?
Also:
If you want to change the number on your phone, and you're not going to steal it (since you own it!), what's the harm?
If you want to change the number and sell the phone, they could simply require a notification to the buyer that the original number was X and the new number is Y.
What's the big fuss??
Here here! Good answer!
[Offtopic]
And as for the distribution... it's on the micro scale, not the macro scale.
And in addition to the politics, let's remember that greed also plays a major part... again on the micro scale (I seem to recall a problem in Somalia or Ethiopia where the warlords horded all the supplies foreign nations shipped in).
[/Offtopic]
I've been doing some study of lightning, and have learned that lightning starts a great, great number of forest fires, and along with hail, a great amount of property damage.
I think this tps12 guy must live on an island in the Pacific where it only rains in the evening, and the inconvenience is that he can't have a barbecue when it does...
OK, I owe you an apology; I didn't know really how this was all organized (or not) to begin with; it's not your fault. I didn't find out about this till yesterday at about 5:00 pm.
Anyway, see you next month.
Regards,
Matt
BEGIN RANT
/.'ers hanging around the "Virgin" store: I thought that was pretty funny, and so did the other guys who read it at the Apple Store with me (Thanks Apple of Easton!) Giving you a -1 was stupid.
6 of us showed up, wandered around until we kind of figured out who was who... but this guy MattRog was nowhere to be found. So maybe next time: provide some information about *WHERE* to meet in the place; the Virgin Megastore is big. How about next time the Barnes & Noble COMPUTER BOOKS SECTION! (That's a no brainer.)
Virgin BAD choice.
To the guy who made the comment about a bunch of
END RANT
I met some nice guys, Matthew, Ben, Ross, Travis and Chris. They hung out at Fado's while I went home to see my family after a long grueling day of design documentation.
Maybe next time!
I wonder if we're ever going to get to the point where they figure out that *they need us* more than *we need them!* Really, there are plenty of things to do that are more interesting than sitting around and watching TV and/or movies.
Who knows? This could lead to a new baby boom! Or a less fat-dense population!
If I understand this right, MS is going to have to convince/coerce hardware manufacturers into providing hardware support for this DRM, at least to some degree.
What if folks got together and filed a class action lawsuit claiming monopolistic coercion, naming Intel and AMD (who I've seen are thinking this is a good idea) and Microsoft. Clearly, this whole nonsense is going to be a threat to open source OS's like Linux, or for that matter ANY new OS for a PC.
"I can't write an OS for this because they refuse to give me the information to run on this platform without signing away all my rights."
Would this work?
I agree with what you've written.
Since when does the Executive Branch (here represented by the FBI) get to exercise powers given to the Judicial Branch (the courts), in that it's the *courts* who decide the punishment?
This certainly does lack due process.
That was one of my first thoughts on reading the article.
If it degrades in an hour, how is it going to keep my Twinkie fresh?
Wait! I know, we'll wrap it in a plastic bag!!
I'm not the one who brought up "bad guys" someone posted it and I repeated it.
If you'd read my post, you'd've understood that while I think these measures might be necessary for the short term, I don't think it's a good idea for them to be permananent. The post I read before was asking why this is a bad thing if they're just out to get the bad guys.
The problem I'm bringing up is that while under this administration, I have no fear of being labeled a "bad guy", from a future administration I just might be considered a "bad guy".
That was my point. And then you apparently took a long drag on your joint and typed in your reply...
It's not that hard... it would be similar to a serial cable that puts the Rx/Tx lines onto a pair of Rx lines so that another computer could listen to both sides of a serial exchange. Not hard at all... it would just be a demdem instead of a modem.
Someone posted a comment that more or less said "Why is this a problem? They're not after *you*, as such; they're after the *bad guys*."
Well, yes, it is a problem. I'm all for going after the bad guys, but remember, if this crisis ever ends, these powers will *not* be retracted.
Government usually only gets bigger, not smaller. And they don't easily give up powers once they've been granted. Perhaps the way Congress should be drafting these laws is that they need to come up on periodic review (kind of like the statute for Independent Counsels). At least if we have to tolerate this potential invasion now, then it could be repealed after a few years when things calm down.
I think it's important not to bind the hands of the FBI too much, but at the same time, someone needs to be looking ahead to when this crisis ends.
Another potential glimmer of hope is that the next administration might be influenced to cause a review to be done as part of his getting elected.
I guess we'll see...
One wonders if maybe Micro$oft has thought of (surely) or engaged in (anyone at M$ want to tell us) attempts to post code somewhat anonymously with the intent to make it less secure.
They do a pretty good job of doing it *un*intentionally with their own software, so one wonders how good (bad) a job they could do if they *REALLY* wanted to make something insecure...