They're worth a read.
Thank you for your condescension. I've read plenty of crypto books.
The one-time pad protocol is 100%, provably secure. Period. The only weaknesses don't have to do with the protocol itself. Flawed implementations (insecure pad; non-random generator of pad, etc.) will ruin any cryptosystem. And if you're objecting to my use of the term "cryptosystem" instead of "protocol" in the previous comment, you obviously know what I meant, so why the fuss?
Codebooks aren't actually unbreakable, as you point out in your second paragraph. There's still redundancy (if nothing else, through syntax) that can give you a better-than-brute-force attack, even if it's impractical to crack the message.
And as for XOR; you're right. However, it's almost always used because you need a reversible bitwise function. I can only think of four, two of which are trivial, leaving only XOR and (not XOR) as your possibilities. If you do operations on chunks larger than bits, you have more options, though.
As Rich0 pointed out, this isn't a "one-time pad" as understood by cryptographers, even though you may have been using your code a single time. This is a codebook, and it is not 100% secure. One-time pads, on the other hand, are the only provably 100% secure cryptosystem.
Actually, the entropy of the message doesn't matter with a one-time pad, so long as your pad is truly random, but you're right that compressing the message gives you more use out of that pad.
Sorry -- dark nl is correct, and you're wrong. Here's an example of how to use a one-time pad:
Your pad = random string of bits, like 0111 0101 0001
Your message = string of bits, say, 1010 1010 1010
Encrypted message = pad XOR message = 1101 1111 1011
Decrypted message = pad XOR encrypted message = 1010 1010 1010.
It has nothing to do with substituting for words or letters.
The drawback to one-time pads is that each side needs to have the same pad, which must be at least as long as the message to be encrypted. The pad has to be shared and stored in a secure fashion, which makes it impractical in most cases.
I agree that the SF Chronicle's piece wasn't terribly good, and that many reporters have no clue what they're doing. (Keay Davidson's actually a decent journalist; this was just not his best work.) However, your piece is far from a shining example of what science journalism should be, it seems your college paper didn't teach you that writing about science for the public is damn hard.
Davidson had 400 words to write about three medalists, each in a different field of mathematics. Along with the explanation of what the medals are and why we should care (the reason for the throwaway 'it doesn't have any immediate applications' section), where the medalists are from, where and when the prizes were awarded, he has to explain what the three sets of research are about (defining terms as basic as "topology" along the way) *and* get an outside comment. That's incredibly difficult, and given the constraints, he did a credible job. Most of the other papers won't touch this subject because it's simply too hard to explain to the lay reader. At least Davidson tried. Give the guy a break.
Lots of scientists work as team members (as you noted in your first post.) They do review controversial work all the time... and if they dismiss an idea that's correct, then the truth will eventually come out as the experiment is replicated or as more data arrives. Or are you just bitter about antigravity's being dismissed? (Scientists try keep their minds open, but not so far open that their brains fall out.)
And as for the media being a driver for scientists, that's ludicrous. How many scientists get their names in the press? And of those, how many even get 15 minutes of fame?
Yegads. Just to respond to a few of the points in your essay:
For a growing number of years, science in academia and business has grown increasingly more corrupt.
Do you have evidence of increasing corruption? There were two high-profile cases of fabrication recently, and this is a typical two-makes-a-trend media story. Can you point me to some data that supports your claim of increased corruption over the years?
Part of this has to do with the profit-potential of controlling a particular scientific advancement.
Yeah, the element-118 marketing potential was limitless.
Look at all the companies who want to patent parts of the human genome for whatever reason. They want to be the only people who can benefit from it.
Whether you agree with patents for genes or not (I don't), I don't see how this is corrupt. The government has ruled that you can get a valid patent for a gene, and these scientists do. They're not doing anything illegal or corrupt -- they just want to be the people to make money off of their research.
... Right now, we have a generation of scientists who've grown up in the wake of the most rapid scientific expansion in the history of man. That expansion has mostly petered out, but hasn't stopped entirely....For the time being, there aren't going to be any earth-shaking breakthroughs in science like there were in the late 1800's and early-mid 1900's.
This argument crops up every few years like clockwork, and the breakthroughs keep coming. Just in the past few years, scientists have come to accept "dark energy", and it is now the biggest mystery in cosmology. Sounds like there's a lot left to learn.
... While it would be nice to think that most scientists are in the field because they geniunely want to discover and help society, many of the people in the field are not. Worse, many of the people in the field are businessmen or are funded by businessmen who pressure them to produce.
I don't know many scientists who are in it for the money or the ego satisfaction of saying that they're a scientists. They could have become lawyers or doctors instead... and do you know what the average salary of a physics associate professor is? After college, grad school, and a postdoc, they earn about $50,000 per year (for 9 months of work). Hardly rolling in the dough, especially after 12 or so years of piddling income.
... In the worst case, you have a field populated by individuals who's livlihood is tied not only to their reputation, but also to their 'production level'.
How horrible. Holding people accountable for their reputation and productivity. JESUS! Can you name any job (other than postal worker) where reputation and productivity don't count? And you seriously think it's a good idea to ignore someone's reputation and accomplishments on the job?
There is a lot of work going on right now studying a possible relationship between anti-gravity and superconductivity that is completely dismissed by 'established' science as pop-science and unscientific nonsense. The reason that 'accepted' researchers are dismissing this work is not because they genuinely think it's bogus, but because it threatens them and their reputations.
No, they ignore it because it's a violation of the second law of thermodynamics. And besides, if there's a lot of work on it, what are you complaining about? Are you afraid that the crank scientists working on antigravity just aren't reputable or accomplished enough?
... Rather than see Universities taking grants from businesses in exchange for access to...etc. etc.
Hey, buddy, maybe you should read the article. Case 1 occurred at Bell Labs. Not a university. Case 2 occurred at LBNL. Government-funded agency, not a university. So even if your idea made sense, what the hell does it have to do with the corruption we're seeing now?
By linking multiple observatories, you can do neat tricks like interferometry. One advantage you get is that your effective mirror/antenna size becomes considerably larger than the little mirrors/antennae that make up the array -- it's a function of how far apart the antennae are rather than the size of the individual elements, which is why a few hundred yards of separation can make a huge difference. The VLT uses this idea, as does the VLBI. Holograms are related in the sense that they exploit phase information of light just as interferometers do.
A 32,000-dalton protein tends to get digested rather than passing directly into the protein, so you'd have to administer it intravenously. And then it has to get past the blood-brain barrier. Even if you got it directly into the brain it's far from obvious that it would have the effect you like.
Devnull17 has it right. It's a libel issue rather than an industry one. It's indisputable that an "error" was made, but imputing malice to the people making that error has not been proven, even though it is pretty obvious. But if there is proof, such as a conviction in court, watch the "error" turn into "fraud" overnight.
It just means that it passes the giggle test. Sometimes it doesn't even mean that. (Nature had its transgenic corn thing and Science had its bubble fusion recently.) It's a big mistake to confuse the imprimatur of a science journal with acceptance by the scientific community.
Peer review doesn't mean it's correct. Even Nature publishes some doozies. (This one isn't so bad, actually... the original one was in ApJ if I recall correctly, which has a lower standard.)
You shouldn't take popular press versions of science papers literally; often the reporter has no more understanding of physics than you do. That being said...
The discovery means faster-than-light travel, which is prohibited by the law of relativity, may one day be possible. I think this is an error on the reporter's part. I don't see how this is at all related to the paper, unless the reporter thinks: "Speed of light changing therefore Einstein was wrong... Einstein was wrong, therefore we can travel faster than light."
If the speed of light was close to infinity, immediately after the Big Bang, Again, a problem with the reporter here. "Close to infinity" means nothing. What this probably means is that the further back you travel in time, the bigger the speed of light was, and as you approach the Big Bang, the speed of light goes off to infinity. A physicist would say that the speed of light diverges, rather than saying it gets close to infinity.
The photons [...] interact with the electrons in the gas clouds, charged particles that orbit the nuclei of the metal atoms. This leaves a fingerprint on the light as it arrives on Earth, called the fine structure constant, Murphy explains. This is actually close to correct, though it's misleading. The fine structure constant equals 2(pi)e^2/hc (if I recall correctly) where e is the charge of the electron, h is the Planck constant, and c is the speed of light. The value of that constant is related to the electromagnetic force, which, in turn, affects the spacing of the lines in an element's spectrum. Conversely, by looking at the spacing of the lines in elements' spectra, you can figure out the fine structure constant.
... and it adds absolutely nothing to the argument over whether there are time-changing constants.
As other people have pointed out, the fine-structure-constant-is-changing work came out a year ago. The fine structure constant is a function of the speed of light, c, and the charge of the electron, e.
This particular article argues that e can't change much over time without causing inconsistencies, so they conclude that c must have been changing. No new data, no new support for the constant-is-changing theory. (And the original study was pretty damn flawed. This paper isn't bad.)
In other words, I believe that the statement During the pulses, they make more than enough power to fire off the next pulse is false, and I ask for a counterexample.
Actually, what I'm saying is that there are no fusion reactors that pulse and make enough power to fire off the next pulse. I think they've only even reached theoretical breakeven within the past few years, where the amount of energy out equals the energy put in. None of the reactors in existence, JET, TFTR, etc., are capable of creating a burning plasma (where the heat from fusion significantly exceeds the heat put in) or having a sustained burn.
An economically sustainable reactor is much, much further away than that, even.
Hey... I'd count the hydrogen bomb as self-sustaining in a sense (its reaction continues, in part, because of the heat from the fusion), but we're talking about reactors here. And the sun counts as soon as we can manufacture one.
Where have they made a self-sustaining reaction? I don't think that we've even had ignition yet, and if I recall correctly, even the next-generation tokamaks, like ITER-lite and FIRE won't be able to have a sustained burn.
I think you're vastly mistaken, and if not, please steer me to the experiment that has had a self-sustaining reaction.
Which include Harold E. Puthoff, Ph.D., famed for his studies of Uri Geller and free-energy machines; Jessica Utts, Ph.D., who is one of the remote-viewing supporters; Edgar Mitchell, Ph.D., astronaut and psychic experimenter; Melvin Morse, MD, Mr. near-death experience, etc. etc. etc. etc.
But how can nature put energy into life when life is already, perhaps, of a higher energy state than is the rest of nature?
You shouldn't bandy about terms like "energy state" -- they have precise meanings. Anyhow, "nature" isn't giving our planet energy; the sun is. It is very hot and bright, and spits out lots of photons, some of which hit the Earth. Organisms, directly or indirectly, use that energy to do work and to reduce entropy locally. No violation of physical laws.
And it's no problem to have order arise out of chaos so long as there's energy available to use... and even if there isn't, order can arise spontaneously in small systems out of disorder, thanks to the statistical nature of the second law.
Slashdot Mirror
They're worth a read. Thank you for your condescension. I've read plenty of crypto books. The one-time pad protocol is 100%, provably secure. Period. The only weaknesses don't have to do with the protocol itself. Flawed implementations (insecure pad; non-random generator of pad, etc.) will ruin any cryptosystem. And if you're objecting to my use of the term "cryptosystem" instead of "protocol" in the previous comment, you obviously know what I meant, so why the fuss?
And as for XOR; you're right. However, it's almost always used because you need a reversible bitwise function. I can only think of four, two of which are trivial, leaving only XOR and (not XOR) as your possibilities. If you do operations on chunks larger than bits, you have more options, though.
As Rich0 pointed out, this isn't a "one-time pad" as understood by cryptographers, even though you may have been using your code a single time. This is a codebook, and it is not 100% secure. One-time pads, on the other hand, are the only provably 100% secure cryptosystem.
Actually, the entropy of the message doesn't matter with a one-time pad, so long as your pad is truly random, but you're right that compressing the message gives you more use out of that pad.
Sorry -- dark nl is correct, and you're wrong. Here's an example of how to use a one-time pad: Your pad = random string of bits, like 0111 0101 0001 Your message = string of bits, say, 1010 1010 1010 Encrypted message = pad XOR message = 1101 1111 1011 Decrypted message = pad XOR encrypted message = 1010 1010 1010. It has nothing to do with substituting for words or letters. The drawback to one-time pads is that each side needs to have the same pad, which must be at least as long as the message to be encrypted. The pad has to be shared and stored in a secure fashion, which makes it impractical in most cases.
Davidson had 400 words to write about three medalists, each in a different field of mathematics. Along with the explanation of what the medals are and why we should care (the reason for the throwaway 'it doesn't have any immediate applications' section), where the medalists are from, where and when the prizes were awarded, he has to explain what the three sets of research are about (defining terms as basic as "topology" along the way) *and* get an outside comment. That's incredibly difficult, and given the constraints, he did a credible job. Most of the other papers won't touch this subject because it's simply too hard to explain to the lay reader. At least Davidson tried. Give the guy a break.
And as for the media being a driver for scientists, that's ludicrous. How many scientists get their names in the press? And of those, how many even get 15 minutes of fame?
For a growing number of years, science in academia and business has grown increasingly more corrupt.
Do you have evidence of increasing corruption? There were two high-profile cases of fabrication recently, and this is a typical two-makes-a-trend media story. Can you point me to some data that supports your claim of increased corruption over the years?
Part of this has to do with the profit-potential of controlling a particular scientific advancement.
Yeah, the element-118 marketing potential was limitless.
Look at all the companies who want to patent parts of the human genome for whatever reason. They want to be the only people who can benefit from it.
Whether you agree with patents for genes or not (I don't), I don't see how this is corrupt. The government has ruled that you can get a valid patent for a gene, and these scientists do. They're not doing anything illegal or corrupt -- they just want to be the people to make money off of their research.
This argument crops up every few years like clockwork, and the breakthroughs keep coming. Just in the past few years, scientists have come to accept "dark energy", and it is now the biggest mystery in cosmology. Sounds like there's a lot left to learn.
I don't know many scientists who are in it for the money or the ego satisfaction of saying that they're a scientists. They could have become lawyers or doctors instead... and do you know what the average salary of a physics associate professor is? After college, grad school, and a postdoc, they earn about $50,000 per year (for 9 months of work). Hardly rolling in the dough, especially after 12 or so years of piddling income.
How horrible. Holding people accountable for their reputation and productivity. JESUS! Can you name any job (other than postal worker) where reputation and productivity don't count? And you seriously think it's a good idea to ignore someone's reputation and accomplishments on the job?
There is a lot of work going on right now studying a possible relationship between anti-gravity and superconductivity that is completely dismissed by 'established' science as pop-science and unscientific nonsense. The reason that 'accepted' researchers are dismissing this work is not because they genuinely think it's bogus, but because it threatens them and their reputations.
No, they ignore it because it's a violation of the second law of thermodynamics. And besides, if there's a lot of work on it, what are you complaining about? Are you afraid that the crank scientists working on antigravity just aren't reputable or accomplished enough?
Hey, buddy, maybe you should read the article. Case 1 occurred at Bell Labs. Not a university. Case 2 occurred at LBNL. Government-funded agency, not a university. So even if your idea made sense, what the hell does it have to do with the corruption we're seeing now?
By linking multiple observatories, you can do neat tricks like interferometry. One advantage you get is that your effective mirror/antenna size becomes considerably larger than the little mirrors/antennae that make up the array -- it's a function of how far apart the antennae are rather than the size of the individual elements, which is why a few hundred yards of separation can make a huge difference. The VLT uses this idea, as does the VLBI. Holograms are related in the sense that they exploit phase information of light just as interferometers do.
That's what I meant.
Sorry, no Jolt++ for you.
Don't worry about it. I had a Nike-Zeus interceptor in my hand, so it would've been wasted anyhow.
Devnull17 has it right. It's a libel issue rather than an industry one. It's indisputable that an "error" was made, but imputing malice to the people making that error has not been proven, even though it is pretty obvious. But if there is proof, such as a conviction in court, watch the "error" turn into "fraud" overnight.
It just means that it passes the giggle test. Sometimes it doesn't even mean that. (Nature had its transgenic corn thing and Science had its bubble fusion recently.) It's a big mistake to confuse the imprimatur of a science journal with acceptance by the scientific community.
Peer review doesn't mean it's correct. Even Nature publishes some doozies. (This one isn't so bad, actually... the original one was in ApJ if I recall correctly, which has a lower standard.)
It's a theoretical result, not an experimental one.
The discovery means faster-than-light travel, which is prohibited by the law of relativity, may one day be possible.
I think this is an error on the reporter's part. I don't see how this is at all related to the paper, unless the reporter thinks: "Speed of light changing therefore Einstein was wrong... Einstein was wrong, therefore we can travel faster than light."
If the speed of light was close to infinity, immediately after the Big Bang,
Again, a problem with the reporter here. "Close to infinity" means nothing. What this probably means is that the further back you travel in time, the bigger the speed of light was, and as you approach the Big Bang, the speed of light goes off to infinity. A physicist would say that the speed of light diverges, rather than saying it gets close to infinity.
The photons [...] interact with the electrons in the gas clouds, charged particles that orbit the nuclei of the metal atoms. This leaves a fingerprint on the light as it arrives on Earth, called the fine structure constant, Murphy explains.
This is actually close to correct, though it's misleading. The fine structure constant equals 2(pi)e^2/hc (if I recall correctly) where e is the charge of the electron, h is the Planck constant, and c is the speed of light. The value of that constant is related to the electromagnetic force, which, in turn, affects the spacing of the lines in an element's spectrum. Conversely, by looking at the spacing of the lines in elements' spectra, you can figure out the fine structure constant.
As other people have pointed out, the fine-structure-constant-is-changing work came out a year ago. The fine structure constant is a function of the speed of light, c, and the charge of the electron, e.
This particular article argues that e can't change much over time without causing inconsistencies, so they conclude that c must have been changing. No new data, no new support for the constant-is-changing theory. (And the original study was pretty damn flawed. This paper isn't bad.)
In other words, I believe that the statement During the pulses, they make more than enough power to fire off the next pulse is false, and I ask for a counterexample.
An economically sustainable reactor is much, much further away than that, even.
Hey... I'd count the hydrogen bomb as self-sustaining in a sense (its reaction continues, in part, because of the heat from the fusion), but we're talking about reactors here. And the sun counts as soon as we can manufacture one.
I think you're vastly mistaken, and if not, please steer me to the experiment that has had a self-sustaining reaction.
If this kind of stuff gets posted to /. then I'm wondering why we didn't hear about any of their animal mutilation reports or the paper that says that time reversals are responsible for deja vu.
Ad hominem is a reasonable argument once in a while. Say crazy things enough times, and your credibility is burned.
And I guess Asimov's Foundation series counts as a dystopic vision
The sun.
But how can nature put energy into life when life is already, perhaps, of a higher energy state than is the rest of nature?
You shouldn't bandy about terms like "energy state" -- they have precise meanings. Anyhow, "nature" isn't giving our planet energy; the sun is. It is very hot and bright, and spits out lots of photons, some of which hit the Earth. Organisms, directly or indirectly, use that energy to do work and to reduce entropy locally. No violation of physical laws.
And it's no problem to have order arise out of chaos so long as there's energy available to use... and even if there isn't, order can arise spontaneously in small systems out of disorder, thanks to the statistical nature of the second law.