The description of a waterbed, although in fiction, was enough information to build one. I Dream of Jeanie would be prior art for pausing a video feed by having a magical being blink at it, but that's not the method in the patent.
That "s" he put in bold in the permissions shows the setuid bit is set. That _does_ mean root owns the process when it launches (though it might revert to the actual user when its finished with whatever it needs to be root for).
Clocks used to use luminous paint containing radium. The numbers were painted by hand. The workers used to lick the paintbrushes to keep a fine point. http://www.semcosh.org/radium.htm
The tritium in modern watches is much safer
http://www.dhs.vic.gov.au/phb/hprot/rsu/pubs/tri ti um.html
Typical annual dose from wearing a plastic watch containing tritium - 4 microsieverts
Average annual dose from natural background radiation - 2100 microsieverts
> The one-time pad... ascii copy of, say, a religious text
That's _not_ a one time pad. It's a book cipher. It works, but it doesn't give you the "absolutely unbreakable if used properly" mathematical guarentee that a true one time pad does.
A one time pad has to be totally random. All possible pads are equally likely, so all possible decryptions are equally likely.
With a book cipher and a sufficiently long message, if you can find two different coherent texts that when combined give the enciphered message, it's almost certain you have the message and key. With a one time pad, any message has a corresponding possible key, with no way to tell which one is right.
You can start the search by guessing a word (ideally a longish one) you think will appear somewhere in one text. Then you compare it against every bit of the coded message to see if it gives something that statistically looks like plain text. If you are lucky you will get a recognizable fragment of a word, which you can then expand. Repeat this process till you have the whole message.
> For some reason, however, Star Trek consistently misses out on the "Geek critique"
At least one science fiction convention panel on "Bad Science" that started "we'll ignore Star Trek, because there are far too many fish in that particular barrel", but that's not exactly missing out on geek critique.
Lots of geeks know the "science" in Star Trek sucks hugely. Some of them enjoy it anyway - Stephen Hawking was prepared to play himself, commenting (AFAIR) that getting people interested in science and space was more important than the details of a TV show.
See http://ssdoo.gsfc.nasa.gov/education/just_for_fun/ startrek.html for some more geek critique.
> I can't see why "virtual" child porn should be illegal. The arguments against real life child porn is the exploitation of children
Possession and distribution of child porn is illegal, as well as producing it, even though by that time the actual exploitation has already happened. This is partly to make it difficult for the exploiters to find a market, and partly to make sure the users realize that society disapproves of them, to discourage them from moving on to actively exploiting children themselves not just fantasising about it.
Those arguments also apply (at least to some extent) to computer generated porn. In addition the defence "but I didn't think it was a real image, I thought it was computer generated or edited" makes it harder to get a conviction for possession of real child porn (and hence harder to track down the actual producers).
So there are arguments against virtual porn - at least realistic looking stuff.
It is possible to take this way too far - like the Canadian law (later declared unconstitutional) that could have classed Romeo and Juliet as child porn because Juliet is under age ("She hath not seen the change of fourteen years") and their relationship has a sexual element.
(There is actual under-age sex mentioned too: Lady Capulet says
Well, think of marriage now; younger than you,
Here in Verona, ladies of esteem,
Are made already mothers: by my count,
I was your mother much upon these years
That you are now a maid. )
Re:Idea after being mugged last year...
on
GPS Meets PCS
·
· Score: 1
> How about one of those recessed reset buttons, where you have to use a paperclip?
And that's going to help in an emergency where you can't dial normally how?
> and the Pentagon attack too, although all media channels seem to blissfully ignore it for lack of terrible images to broadcast
Many fewer people were killed there, there may be security reasons for keeping detail quiet, AFAIK there hasn't been any suggestion the damaged section should be redesigned, and when you're trying to unite the world behind you concentrating on the victims who weren't connected with the American military looks better.
There were civilian casualties at the Pentagon too, of course, and all the victims' families suffered just as much as the WTC victims' families, but it still doesn't generate the same outrage.
I'm cynical enough to suspect that's the main reason. On the other hand I care more about the WTC because my sister-in-law worked near there. She's ok, but the building she worked in has since come down too. I don't know anyne who worked in the Pentagon. Given the relative numbers of people in or close to the two buildings, lots of other people are going to be in similar situations.
See http://www.spaceimaging.com/newsroom/attack_galler y.htm to see the relevent areas, before and after.
The reason for most editorial cuts in newspaper stories
We're not talking about a cut here. The problem isn't that bits of his side were dropped, but that he was misrepresented. In the original article he says
The article states that as the inventor of PGP, I was "overwhelmed with feelings of guilt". I never implied that in the interview, and specifically went out of my way to emphasize to her that that was not the case
> Yes, I've been researching that for some time. My conclusion is that it is not random at all.
Whereas decently encrypted data does look random. So either it's poorly encrypted, or it's not random because to do the job of making every post look slightly different to spam filters a very poor pseudo-random number generator is adequate.
> Absolute morals can NOT exist without religion... the only way that's possible is if there's a god doing the mandating.
Bollocks. You can have religion without god, god without religion, and universal laws (like the laws of physics) without either.
You could even have a sufficiently wise being to determine universal laws of human behaviour without that being having to be a god.
> The British attempted to take Afghanistan over 100 years ago
http://www.guardian.co.uk/afghanistan/story/0,12 84,554201,00.html
has some more recent British experience.
Author is described as ex-SAS, and mentions "my MI6 boss". "We were there to assess their fighting capability and to retrieve Soviet equipment" but "We trained the Afghans".
The US of course will have similar experience from also helping train Afghans to fight the Soviets.
> People are going to get this FREE promo CD, find that it doesn't work, and chuck the damned thing away.
So they'll be able to say "it was a success, we had hardly any complaints". And then when they release a non-free CD and get complaints they'll say "We tested the protection scheme before and it doesn't cause problems, and this CD plays on the player here in the store, so no you can't have a refund just because it doesn't work in your player at home or in your car. In fact if you don't stop complaining and putting off our other customers we'll say you must have been trying to pirate it to even realize it was protected and call the cops"
If you're a _real_ privacy freak, you worry about whether they really follow the policy (and always will in the future, even if ownership etc. changes).
> When the government uses the key of terrorist Tim to decode his messages, they find that not only did he use the mandated scheme, but he also encrypted his data with his own scheme, which, of course, is unbreakable with current technology.
And is also illegal (under at least some proposed laws). So, lacking evidence of him being a terrorist, you can lock him up for breaking the crypto laws.
That kind of sucks if Tim isn't really a terrorist at all, but a dissident using encryption to detail human rights violations of his oppressive government, and the government are just looking for an excuse to shut him up but, hey, in that case he isn't an American so it doesn't really matter, and encryption might be illegal for him without any international pressure from America.
Slashdot Mirror
> He probably wouldn't have been as affective on the web.
I'm sure he would be. Probably not as effective though.
http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?affective
http://www.google.com/search?client=googlet&q=tita nium%20crowbar
http://jeff.skrysak.com/titanium/
The description of a waterbed, although in fiction, was enough information to build one. I Dream of Jeanie would be prior art for pausing a video feed by having a magical being blink at it, but that's not the method in the patent.
> I'm curious if you read the patent before posting that.
I'm not. Since the patent specifies mechanism, it's obvious he hadn't.
That "s" he put in bold in the permissions shows the setuid bit is set. That _does_ mean root owns the process when it launches (though it might revert to the actual user when its finished with whatever it needs to be root for).
> When do you use your left thumb?
, 41 61,2309465,00.html suggests swapping thumb every hour to reduce stress in the tendons.
Some people vary which thumb they use for space depending on which hand is used for the previous or next letter.
http://www.zdnet.com/products/stories/reviews/0
Clocks used to use luminous paint containing radium. The numbers were painted by hand. The workers used to lick the paintbrushes to keep a fine point. http://www.semcosh.org/radium.htm
i ti um.html
The tritium in modern watches is much safer
http://www.dhs.vic.gov.au/phb/hprot/rsu/pubs/tr
Typical annual dose from wearing a plastic watch containing tritium - 4 microsieverts
Average annual dose from natural background radiation - 2100 microsieverts
> The one-time pad ... ascii copy of, say, a religious text
That's _not_ a one time pad. It's a book cipher. It works, but it doesn't give you the "absolutely unbreakable if used properly" mathematical guarentee that a true one time pad does.
A one time pad has to be totally random. All possible pads are equally likely, so all possible decryptions are equally likely.
With a book cipher and a sufficiently long message, if you can find two different coherent texts that when combined give the enciphered message, it's almost certain you have the message and key. With a one time pad, any message has a corresponding possible key, with no way to tell which one is right.
You can start the search by guessing a word (ideally a longish one) you think will appear somewhere in one text. Then you compare it against every bit of the coded message to see if it gives something that statistically looks like plain text. If you are lucky you will get a recognizable fragment of a word, which you can then expand. Repeat this process till you have the whole message.
> For some reason, however, Star Trek consistently misses out on the "Geek critique"
/ startrek.html for some more geek critique.
At least one science fiction convention panel on "Bad Science" that started "we'll ignore Star Trek, because there are far too many fish in that particular barrel", but that's not exactly missing out on geek critique.
Lots of geeks know the "science" in Star Trek sucks hugely. Some of them enjoy it anyway - Stephen Hawking was prepared to play himself, commenting (AFAIR) that getting people interested in science and space was more important than the details of a TV show.
See http://ssdoo.gsfc.nasa.gov/education/just_for_fun
> IBM had a suite of apps that had "real-life" skins, like a fax app that looked like a fax machine, a phone that looked like a phone
And, almost unbelievably, a CD player that looked like a CD case. http://www.iarchitect.com/realcd.htm
> I can't see why "virtual" child porn should be illegal. The arguments against real life child porn is the exploitation of children
Possession and distribution of child porn is illegal, as well as producing it, even though by that time the actual exploitation has already happened. This is partly to make it difficult for the exploiters to find a market, and partly to make sure the users realize that society disapproves of them, to discourage them from moving on to actively exploiting children themselves not just fantasising about it.
Those arguments also apply (at least to some extent) to computer generated porn. In addition the defence "but I didn't think it was a real image, I thought it was computer generated or edited" makes it harder to get a conviction for possession of real child porn (and hence harder to track down the actual producers).
So there are arguments against virtual porn - at least realistic looking stuff.
It is possible to take this way too far - like the Canadian law (later declared unconstitutional) that could have classed Romeo and Juliet as child porn because Juliet is under age ("She hath not seen the change of fourteen years") and their relationship has a sexual element.
(There is actual under-age sex mentioned too: Lady Capulet says
Well, think of marriage now; younger than you,
Here in Verona, ladies of esteem,
Are made already mothers: by my count,
I was your mother much upon these years
That you are now a maid. )
> How about one of those recessed reset buttons, where you have to use a paperclip?
And that's going to help in an emergency where you can't dial normally how?
> and the Pentagon attack too, although all media channels seem to blissfully ignore it for lack of terrible images to broadcast
r y.htm to see the relevent areas, before and after.
Many fewer people were killed there, there may be security reasons for keeping detail quiet, AFAIK there hasn't been any suggestion the damaged section should be redesigned, and when you're trying to unite the world behind you concentrating on the victims who weren't connected with the American military looks better.
There were civilian casualties at the Pentagon too, of course, and all the victims' families suffered just as much as the WTC victims' families, but it still doesn't generate the same outrage.
I'm cynical enough to suspect that's the main reason. On the other hand I care more about the WTC because my sister-in-law worked near there. She's ok, but the building she worked in has since come down too. I don't know anyne who worked in the Pentagon. Given the relative numbers of people in or close to the two buildings, lots of other people are going to be in similar situations.
See http://www.spaceimaging.com/newsroom/attack_galle
> Just takes a single snippet of e-lisp.
> (use-global-map (make-sparse-keymap))
More seriously, for people who like the modal nature of vi commands but also want the full power of emacs, there's M-x viper.
If you want the full power of emacs and the speed of vi, too bad.
We're not talking about a cut here. The problem isn't that bits of his side were dropped, but that he was misrepresented. In the original article he says
> my grandmother for instance was a smart woman, but she never understood half of the technical stuff they were saying
What's to understand? They make it up as they go along.
> Yes, I've been researching that for some time. My conclusion is that it is not random at all.
Whereas decently encrypted data does look random. So either it's poorly encrypted, or it's not random because to do the job of making every post look slightly different to spam filters a very poor pseudo-random number generator is adequate.
> Microsoft does not make the world's most popular Web server. That's Apache.
But IIS is much more popular in that important 'didn't even realize I was running a webserver, just ticked "Full Install"' market segment.
> our intelligence organizations are incompetent. The FBI is better known for its blunders ... than for its successes.
That could be a sampling error. "Nothing happened because we got sufficient intelligence beforehand and we're not talking about it" isn't newsworthy.
> Absolute morals can NOT exist without religion ... the only way that's possible is if there's a god doing the mandating.
Bollocks. You can have religion without god, god without religion, and universal laws (like the laws of physics) without either.
You could even have a sufficiently wise being to determine universal laws of human behaviour without that being having to be a god.
> The British attempted to take Afghanistan over 100 years ago
2 84 ,554201,00.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/afghanistan/story/0,1
has some more recent British experience.
Author is described as ex-SAS, and mentions "my MI6 boss". "We were there to assess their fighting capability and to retrieve Soviet equipment" but "We trained the Afghans".
The US of course will have similar experience from also helping train Afghans to fight the Soviets.
> People are going to get this FREE promo CD, find that it doesn't work, and chuck the damned thing away.
So they'll be able to say "it was a success, we had hardly any complaints". And then when they release a non-free CD and get complaints they'll say "We tested the protection scheme before and it doesn't cause problems, and this CD plays on the player here in the store, so no you can't have a refund just because it doesn't work in your player at home or in your car. In fact if you don't stop complaining and putting off our other customers we'll say you must have been trying to pirate it to even realize it was protected and call the cops"
> However, when was the last time you actually went to a porn page for stock quotes, news headlines, driving directions or hotel accomodations, etc?
"I only read it for the articles".
If you're a _real_ privacy freak, you worry about whether they really follow the policy (and always will in the future, even if ownership etc. changes).
> When the government uses the key of terrorist Tim to decode his messages, they find that not only did he use the mandated scheme, but he also encrypted his data with his own scheme, which, of course, is unbreakable with current technology.
And is also illegal (under at least some proposed laws). So, lacking evidence of him being a terrorist, you can lock him up for breaking the crypto laws.
That kind of sucks if Tim isn't really a terrorist at all, but a dissident using encryption to detail human rights violations of his oppressive government, and the government are just looking for an excuse to shut him up but, hey, in that case he isn't an American so it doesn't really matter, and encryption might be illegal for him without any international pressure from America.
[Caution: Message may contain traces of sarcasm.]