Hype. There's a VERY small chance that RSA could be cracked (that's in the article you linked). If RSA is cracked, the development in number theory is likely to have a LOT of repercussions. I suppose the recommended switching to ECC because it's the only other option.
Ah, I understand. You're talking about people who are skeptical of your favourite off the wall theory. That's not religion. As the thread before your post said, when Slashdotter 214243 comes along with some theory from left field, along with an assertion that the experts (some of whom have Nobel prizes), who have put careers into looking into this question, are wrong (or religious), he better have some good evidence to support it. Every time I've seen it that "evidence" boiled down to a vague, usually incorrect understanding, usually with a healthy dose of conspiracy theory.
Maybe you've seen something a little more solid? Care to share?
So who is it you're accusing of the religion of dark matter? The astrophysicists who've spent the last twenty years thinking up all sorts of crazy ideas for what it might be and then testing those ideas?
That's because when you say things like that you check off quite a few boxes on the crackpot criteria.
It's not a religion. Lots of different dark matter theories and alternatives have been proposed and tested. The problem is that when some random Slashdotter comes along and says "dude, it must be something else!" the actual astronomers, and the amateurs who can read, roll their eyes. When the same Slashdotter then says "dude, you're not taking me seriously because you can't get past your religious dogma!" said astronomers and literate amateurs roll their eyes harder.
Dark matter, in various forms, is the hypothesis(ses) that explain empirical observations. For the last couple of decades we've been at the stage of hypothesizing various kinds of dark matter and testing them to see if they fit. The one that fits best so far, and is thus the leading contender, is a new kind of subatomic particle that interacts weakly and is fairly heavy. The dark matter story is an excellent example of how science is supposed to work.
Don't make the mistake of thinking there was just one ether theory. There were lots of them, many quite compatible with special relativity. Quite a few that sound like 1890s versions of quantum electrodynamics.
The Higgs field is just the latest one. Quantum field theory (what people mean today when they say "quantum mechanics") includes a field for every fundamental particle. Yes, the ether won.
Sure, you can make all sorts of complex theories to explain anything you want. The reason cold dark matter is so popular is because one simple, very plausible hypothesis, the existence of a heavy, weakly interacting particle, explains a great deal.
Don't think a heavy, weakly interacting particle is plausible? Right, because it's not like we've observed any light weakly interacting particles already.
I don't think very many people quibbled with the first US invasion of Iraq. You know, the one done under the auspices of the UN, with the purpose of liberating Kuwait, where the US withdrew afterwards. The second one - the one done unilaterally for made up reasons - that one concerned people.
Afghanistan, Yugoslavia, Libya, maybe not that worrying. The sabre rattling against Iran and North Korea, well, if I were a citizen of either I'd be a little worried about being invaded by the world's sole superpower. And if you want to talk about leaving "dictators to continue wiping out their citizens," the US has a rather bad track record involving destabilizing democratic (or mostly so) governments and installing dictators in their place. Iran is an excellent example, along with half of South America. They even made a movie recently about the former. Then there are the cases like Somalia, where the US rode in on a white horse to stop the slaughter... except the US had been funding Somalian warlords.
Syria? You mean the country where a military dictatorship seized power in 1949... after conferring extensively with the CIA? Then approved a pipeline right afterward so the US could get Saudi oil more easily?
Then there's Guatemala, a Slashdot favourite "third world hellhole" because of the exploits of McAfee, where the (somewhat) democratic government was overthrown in the fifties by the CIA because the US was afraid they might turn commie. Oh, and the United Fruit Company had acquired quite a bit of land there.
Brazil. Possibly Ghana. Chile. Afghanistan, where you gave all those weapons and training to what would be come the Taliban wasn't clear cut badness, but it probably wasn't the smartest thing to do. Turkey. Nicaragua.
The US unquestionably does quite a lot of good. The problem is, you guys do some evil mixed in there. Do you just hope it all evens out? Or maybe that everybody else won't notice? Judging by your post, many US citizens aren't really able to differentiate between the good and the bad. Invading Iraq... well, they invaded Kuwait right? We were just liberating Kuwait! Besides, Saddam had weapons of mass destruction! Iran? They took over our embassy in the 70's, didn't they? Never mind that the embassy was taken over by citizens angry at the US for overthrowing their government.
At the moment most of the countries that appear desperate to develop, and most likely to use, weapons of mass destruction are doing so because they're on the US's next to invade list. The US spent a few decades on such a list, from a much less overwhelming adversary, and was quite ready to use nukes.
Maybe if the big dumb giant stopped invading places the little guys would be less paranoid.
Absolutely. The first time you send a message to someone, ask them for their key. Done. You can do that now. Better yet, just append your key fingerprint to every e-mail. I know some people who used to do that. But nobody cares about encrypting e-mail, so very few people bother.
Secure DNS is just another way of some organization vouching for the data. If you trust Verisign or whoever ends up issuing the keys, great. They have such a great track record though.
Also, if it's a powerful government you're trying to hide things from, secure DNS, or any other form of centralized key store, is bad. It's a single place that can be compromised.
The ONLY way to have secure communications is to exchange a key personally, with whatever means you feel is sufficient, whether that's exchanging a key by e-mail now and using it for the next ten years, or meeting face to face.
DNS isn't secure. There are all sorts of ways to spoof it. Not that a government would bother - they'd just walk in and inform the key authority that key A was going to be, ah, temporarily replaced. Key authorities come down to having to trust some computer that's not under your control.
We DO have public key repositories. Every time you visit a site using https you're using one. They work reasonably well when a big corporation wants another big corporation to vouch for it (and also exclude anyone else who doesn't pony up the cash for the service).
For individuals it makes much more sense to arrange the key exchange yourself, or to refer to a key published somewhere that YOU verify. Am I talking to the guy who I was talking to last week? Check my list of keys. Am I talking to the guy who posted that message on that forum? Check the signature attached to his forum post.
Why doesn't everyone encrypt their messages then? Because the vast majority of people just can't be bothered.
Except I'd rather spend my $80T on electronic gizmos, food and shelter instead of $20T on those things and $60T helping you losers who insist on living on flood plains move to higher ground.
Oddly, complex things like population control don't work in the simple straightforward way you think.
Educating women is the most effective means of birth control, by far. Making people healthy means they can work more reliably, have more money, afford to go to school, and not miss school because they're sick.
The only effective way we've found to decrease population growth is to educate people, especially women. Not sex ed, regular education. A big problem with education in malarial areas is that people miss a lot of school because they're sick, and many children you've spent time teaching die before growing up and having an effect on society.
So institute a nickel tax, but use it to make and distribute vaccines, and build schools.
Not to mention that people like me who will pay a few hundred dollars to get a malaria vaccination will help fund it's manufacture and distribution to the people who can't afford it.
Slashdot Mirror
Hype. There's a VERY small chance that RSA could be cracked (that's in the article you linked). If RSA is cracked, the development in number theory is likely to have a LOT of repercussions. I suppose the recommended switching to ECC because it's the only other option.
Ah, I understand. You're talking about people who are skeptical of your favourite off the wall theory. That's not religion. As the thread before your post said, when Slashdotter 214243 comes along with some theory from left field, along with an assertion that the experts (some of whom have Nobel prizes), who have put careers into looking into this question, are wrong (or religious), he better have some good evidence to support it. Every time I've seen it that "evidence" boiled down to a vague, usually incorrect understanding, usually with a healthy dose of conspiracy theory.
Maybe you've seen something a little more solid? Care to share?
So who is it you're accusing of the religion of dark matter? The astrophysicists who've spent the last twenty years thinking up all sorts of crazy ideas for what it might be and then testing those ideas?
It's extremely difficult or impossible for it to collide with itself. Better, pedantic man?
That's because when you say things like that you check off quite a few boxes on the crackpot criteria.
It's not a religion. Lots of different dark matter theories and alternatives have been proposed and tested. The problem is that when some random Slashdotter comes along and says "dude, it must be something else!" the actual astronomers, and the amateurs who can read, roll their eyes. When the same Slashdotter then says "dude, you're not taking me seriously because you can't get past your religious dogma!" said astronomers and literate amateurs roll their eyes harder.
Dark matter, in various forms, is the hypothesis(ses) that explain empirical observations. For the last couple of decades we've been at the stage of hypothesizing various kinds of dark matter and testing them to see if they fit. The one that fits best so far, and is thus the leading contender, is a new kind of subatomic particle that interacts weakly and is fairly heavy. The dark matter story is an excellent example of how science is supposed to work.
Because the right combination of dust can't be the answer. That was thought of, tested, and it failed to explain observations.
Don't make the mistake of thinking there was just one ether theory. There were lots of them, many quite compatible with special relativity. Quite a few that sound like 1890s versions of quantum electrodynamics.
The Higgs field is just the latest one. Quantum field theory (what people mean today when they say "quantum mechanics") includes a field for every fundamental particle. Yes, the ether won.
Sure, you can make all sorts of complex theories to explain anything you want. The reason cold dark matter is so popular is because one simple, very plausible hypothesis, the existence of a heavy, weakly interacting particle, explains a great deal.
Don't think a heavy, weakly interacting particle is plausible? Right, because it's not like we've observed any light weakly interacting particles already.
I don't think very many people quibbled with the first US invasion of Iraq. You know, the one done under the auspices of the UN, with the purpose of liberating Kuwait, where the US withdrew afterwards. The second one - the one done unilaterally for made up reasons - that one concerned people.
Afghanistan, Yugoslavia, Libya, maybe not that worrying. The sabre rattling against Iran and North Korea, well, if I were a citizen of either I'd be a little worried about being invaded by the world's sole superpower. And if you want to talk about leaving "dictators to continue wiping out their citizens," the US has a rather bad track record involving destabilizing democratic (or mostly so) governments and installing dictators in their place. Iran is an excellent example, along with half of South America. They even made a movie recently about the former. Then there are the cases like Somalia, where the US rode in on a white horse to stop the slaughter... except the US had been funding Somalian warlords.
Syria? You mean the country where a military dictatorship seized power in 1949... after conferring extensively with the CIA? Then approved a pipeline right afterward so the US could get Saudi oil more easily?
Then there's Guatemala, a Slashdot favourite "third world hellhole" because of the exploits of McAfee, where the (somewhat) democratic government was overthrown in the fifties by the CIA because the US was afraid they might turn commie. Oh, and the United Fruit Company had acquired quite a bit of land there.
Brazil. Possibly Ghana. Chile. Afghanistan, where you gave all those weapons and training to what would be come the Taliban wasn't clear cut badness, but it probably wasn't the smartest thing to do. Turkey. Nicaragua.
The US unquestionably does quite a lot of good. The problem is, you guys do some evil mixed in there. Do you just hope it all evens out? Or maybe that everybody else won't notice? Judging by your post, many US citizens aren't really able to differentiate between the good and the bad. Invading Iraq... well, they invaded Kuwait right? We were just liberating Kuwait! Besides, Saddam had weapons of mass destruction! Iran? They took over our embassy in the 70's, didn't they? Never mind that the embassy was taken over by citizens angry at the US for overthrowing their government.
As opposed to the ether of the 19th century, quantum fields, which are what we currently use to explain everything?
At the moment most of the countries that appear desperate to develop, and most likely to use, weapons of mass destruction are doing so because they're on the US's next to invade list. The US spent a few decades on such a list, from a much less overwhelming adversary, and was quite ready to use nukes.
Maybe if the big dumb giant stopped invading places the little guys would be less paranoid.
Absolutely. The first time you send a message to someone, ask them for their key. Done. You can do that now. Better yet, just append your key fingerprint to every e-mail. I know some people who used to do that. But nobody cares about encrypting e-mail, so very few people bother.
Secure DNS is just another way of some organization vouching for the data. If you trust Verisign or whoever ends up issuing the keys, great. They have such a great track record though.
Also, if it's a powerful government you're trying to hide things from, secure DNS, or any other form of centralized key store, is bad. It's a single place that can be compromised.
The ONLY way to have secure communications is to exchange a key personally, with whatever means you feel is sufficient, whether that's exchanging a key by e-mail now and using it for the next ten years, or meeting face to face.
Because somebody realised it was a dumb idea.
DNS isn't secure. There are all sorts of ways to spoof it. Not that a government would bother - they'd just walk in and inform the key authority that key A was going to be, ah, temporarily replaced. Key authorities come down to having to trust some computer that's not under your control.
We DO have public key repositories. Every time you visit a site using https you're using one. They work reasonably well when a big corporation wants another big corporation to vouch for it (and also exclude anyone else who doesn't pony up the cash for the service).
For individuals it makes much more sense to arrange the key exchange yourself, or to refer to a key published somewhere that YOU verify. Am I talking to the guy who I was talking to last week? Check my list of keys. Am I talking to the guy who posted that message on that forum? Check the signature attached to his forum post.
Why doesn't everyone encrypt their messages then? Because the vast majority of people just can't be bothered.
Except I'd rather spend my $80T on electronic gizmos, food and shelter instead of $20T on those things and $60T helping you losers who insist on living on flood plains move to higher ground.
I remember people saying that about hard drives larger than 20 MB.
Have you noticed that countries where disease and death rates are lowest are also the ones where birth rates are below replacement?
Oddly, complex things like population control don't work in the simple straightforward way you think.
Educating women is the most effective means of birth control, by far. Making people healthy means they can work more reliably, have more money, afford to go to school, and not miss school because they're sick.
Because that doesn't work.
The only effective way we've found to decrease population growth is to educate people, especially women. Not sex ed, regular education. A big problem with education in malarial areas is that people miss a lot of school because they're sick, and many children you've spent time teaching die before growing up and having an effect on society.
So institute a nickel tax, but use it to make and distribute vaccines, and build schools.
Apparently bullets to the head are also non-carcinogenic.
Sure. Just like yellow fever right?
Not to mention that people like me who will pay a few hundred dollars to get a malaria vaccination will help fund it's manufacture and distribution to the people who can't afford it.
True. Jews and most Christians believe in male genital mutilation.