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User: maxwell+demon

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Comments · 12,279

  1. Re:Sorry, the future is bicycle, not flying cars on Where Are the Flying Cars? · · Score: 1

    Instead I think it is vastly more likely that people will be traveling with a combination of public transport and bicycle in a few years from now. Much healthier for everyone.

    A bus where the passengers have to pedal?
  2. Re:Morale booster? on NASA Knows How To Party · · Score: 5, Funny

    Yeah, the people at NASA could easily be outdone at their own job by a crowd of slashdot reading armchair-rocket-scientists, right? This armchair-rocket you speak of seems like an interesting concept. Could you tell me more about it?
  3. Re:Future Projections... ? on Germany Implements Sweeping Data Retention Policies · · Score: 1

    2012... They are *$(*#ed and you WIN! All Internet is now encrypted and unbreakable and everyone has multi-terabyte hard drives and multi-hundred Megabit or gigabit speeds to home. Uhh.. we'll die in 2012, haven't you heard?

    http://survive2012.com/

    According to their calendar, the Maya believed that their world would end on Dec 21, 2012. Of all the dates put forth by prophets and cultures for a doomsday, this is one with an authentic almost eerie feel to it. But what will happen? A global cataclysm is one possibility. Presented here is enough information to help you decide - be you an expert or a beginner. That was only a misinterpretation, because their prophets had no clue about modern technology. Due to all data being encrypted after 2012, they seemed not to get any meaningful data from after that time, so they incorrectly concluded that there's no meaningful data after that time, because the world ended.
  4. Re:But I'll bet you almost anything ... on Germany Implements Sweeping Data Retention Policies · · Score: 1

    Since the opposition currently only consists of the small parties (both large parties are forming a coalition right now), it's extremely improbable that there will be a government any time soon which doesn't include one of the parties currently in power.

  5. Re:Print it out on Germany Implements Sweeping Data Retention Policies · · Score: 1

    Or store it encrypted. "Oh yes, here's the data. It's encrypted, so no unauthorized reading is possible. Unfortunately we lost the decryption key ..."

  6. Re:This is great news. on Germany Implements Sweeping Data Retention Policies · · Score: 1
    Do they only require the saving of email headers, or also of protocol data?
    You know, the actual mail headers are mostly irrelevant for the mail transport, so you could send a mail to anyone with

    From: Undisclosed Sender
    To: Undisclosed Recipients
    and still have the mail delivered correctly as long as the correct commands are sent on the SMTP server.
  7. Re:All I have to say is ... on Germany Implements Sweeping Data Retention Policies · · Score: 1

    Well, you know, if your left foot is damaged, you have to move your weight to the right in order to relieve your left foot.

  8. Re:maybe like ... on Germany Implements Sweeping Data Retention Policies · · Score: 1

    From the linked page:
    "Therefore the developers have asked the user community not to mention the software in high publicity websites like Slashdot."

  9. Re:I almost posted this in the AT&T spying com on Germany Implements Sweeping Data Retention Policies · · Score: 1

    On Slashdot, they first moderated down troll posts, and I didn't speak up because I didn't want to troll.
    Then they moderated down redundant posts, and I didn't speak up because it would have been redundant.
    Then they moderated down offtopic posts, and I didn't speak up because it would have been offtopic.
    Then they moderated down flamebait posts, and I didn't speak up because that would have been flamebait.
    Then they moderated down my posts as overrated, but at that time there was no one with mod points left to correct it.

  10. Re:At least they saw it coming on Germany Implements Sweeping Data Retention Policies · · Score: 3, Funny
    Well, just add to every email the header

    X-Terrorist: No
    and you should be safe. :-)
  11. Re:really stupid OP ? on Germany Implements Sweeping Data Retention Policies · · Score: 1

    Digital signature.
    PGP can do more than encryption.

  12. Re:Will noly slow things down. on Robot-Run Warehouse Speeds Deliveries · · Score: 1

    Since it's the robots which fetch the items, the workers don't need to know where they are. The robots should have no problems finding the items, provided the programmers have done their job right.

  13. Re:Encryption == Something to Hide on NIST Opens Competition for a New Hash Algorithm · · Score: 1

    Of course you don't want your content to be tampered with, but that doesn't mean that the use of encryption is for that goal. The fact that you encrypt something doesn't mean that you can't use other measures to prevent tampering with it.

  14. Re:What would happen if... on NIST Opens Competition for a New Hash Algorithm · · Score: 1

    Well, I'm not a native English speaker, so I might miss some other meaning of the words, but I'd consider the simple (but utterly useless) explicit algorithm I described both as fixed (you can run it as-is on every program you want; you'll just get no useful answer in almost all cases) and systematic (the system is quite simple - just two comparisons -, but there's nothing random about it).

  15. Re:What would happen if... on NIST Opens Competition for a New Hash Algorithm · · Score: 1

    No. What's impossible is to write an algorithm which can tell for every algorithm if it will halt. It's definitively possible to write an algorithm which can tell for some algorithms whether they can halt (a very simple example would be an algorithm which returns "yes" for "int main() {}", "no" for "int main() { while(true); }" and "maybe" otherwise). Now given that humans cannot tell for every given algorithm as well (a human can only handle a certain amount of complexity), the crucial question is if algorithms can be better than humans in doing so. Existing algorithms obviously are not, but AFAIK there's no known reason why it should be impossible in principle.

  16. Re:I have it! on NIST Opens Competition for a New Hash Algorithm · · Score: 1

    I think you have a redundant a.

  17. Re:Encryption == Something to Hide on NIST Opens Competition for a New Hash Algorithm · · Score: 1

    Why would anyone encrypt something unless they wanted it to remain untampered with?

    Because they want the content to be unknown to third parties.
  18. Re:Babelfish fun on Babelfish Sparks Minor Diplomatic Row · · Score: 1

    In that case, you really should try this.

    Your sentence gets transformed to:

    I can translate a phrase of the program in both felt between the languages.

    Or including Chinese, Japanese and Korean:

    Esteem report/ratio, that one that the situation turns, those between the language and the restoration nonupdated in the front part.

  19. Re:Huh? on Babelfish Sparks Minor Diplomatic Row · · Score: 1

    Oh, I have no doubt about the babelfish translation

    Well, in that case you should really try it out. You'll not get a single bad translation from Hebrew to Dutch :-)
  20. Re:Well, at least it wasn't... on Babelfish Sparks Minor Diplomatic Row · · Score: 1

    Its superficial lower whole number is belongs to us.

    (No, I didn't make that up, it's the result of passing it through lost in translation)

  21. Re:Not so easy on Bill to Require Open Access to Scientific Papers · · Score: 1

    How much will be saved on subscription costs for libraries? Maybe the reduced library cost offsets the increased cost of publishing? Especially since for external funding, also the publication cost will likely be covered by the funding, and thus not payed by the tax payer.

  22. Re:but... on Low-Cost Board Runs Linux, Google Apps · · Score: 1

    Ummm RTFA? Or RTFS? Actually RTFH! (H = Headline)
  23. Re:Indeed on Whose Laws Apply On the ISS? · · Score: 1

    I think in Space, it would be more like "Two men leave, one man enters" ...

  24. Re:Interesting Questions on Whose Laws Apply On the ISS? · · Score: 1

    I've read of a similar case from some time back in the US. What happened was a shooting murder in which one of them (I've forgotten which) was in California, and the other was in Nevada. The lawyers discovered that in the shooter's state, the law stated that prosecution had to happen in the state where the death occurred, while in the victim's state, the prosecution had to be in the killer's state. So neither state had jurisdiction.

    Needless to say, both states quickly revised their laws so this couldn't happen again.

    So now the shooter's state's law says the prosecution has to happen in the shooter's state, while the victim's state's law now says the prosecution has to happen in the victim's state?
  25. Re:It's probably too much to ask, but... on Whose Laws Apply On the ISS? · · Score: 1

    Do not lie

    Do the astronauts have that little space up there that they may not even lie? :-)