I can visualize a billion by picturing a cube of sugar cubes, 1000 cubes per side.
That'd only be a million.
I don't know what kind of math you're doing.
If each edge of the cube is 1000 long, then 1000 x 1000 x 1000 = 1 x 10^9 = 1 billion. If you thought the poster meant 1000 cubes per face, then each edge would be 1000^0.5 long (which is an irrational, non-integer number--not possible with discrete sugar cubes. Sorry if it's supposed to be discreet, but I can never remember which is which). That means the total volume would be 1000 x 1000^0.5 which is certainly not a million. Maybe you were thinking a cube with 100 cubes per edge, since 100 x 100 x 100 = 1 million
I haven't personally suffered a hard drive crash, but a good friend of mine had the misfortune of owning a Western Digital Caviar. The thing crashed repeatedly: he'd have it replaced (under warranty) and the replacement would crash. After the second crash, they accidentally sent him two replacement drives, but given their quality it wasn't such a bonus. Both of those replacement drives crashed, too.
I've heard Western Digital has improved, but I'm still wary. Have you ever actually had a DeskStar crash? Mine has run smoothly ever since I got it. Were there certain lots that were especially prone to failure?
If they are disconnected from everyone else, how would any kind of search reach them/everybody else?
Exactly. They wouldn't.
Do note that I was talking about areas of users not being able to connect to anyone else. P2P is not the same as explicit IP addresses like on the web. For example, it would be a lot harder for me to get to slashdot by only clicking on links than by typing the address into my browser's bar.
That wouldn't solve the problem of local areas of users that are disconnected from everyone but themselves. I know this is an issue with other p2p apps. You can only connect to someone who's in your area, and sometimes that just isn't good enough. I know China is in many respects isolated from the rest of the internet.
I just have to make a comment about the Dodge Caravan.
This is completely anecdotal, and in this case the expression "your mileage may vary" is especially apt, but the Dodge Caravan is the reason why I will probably never buy an American car. Or van, in this case. My family made the mistake of getting one several years ago. I believe it was a 1985 manual transmission (not many of those made, either). That piece of shit just kept falling apart, piece by piece. The interior plastic crap broke off at the slightest touch. The ceiling fell down (the cloth covering, that is). But the coup de grace happened at the most inopportune time. We were on a family trip, about 1000 miles from home, when the engine exploded. I don't know which part of it broke, but it sprayed oil all over the windshield while we were on the highway. Luckily my dad had plenty of spare oil, and for about 50 miles we would stop every 5 miles, wipe off the windshield enough to see, add another quart of oil, and get back on the highway going 35 mph.
That engine had less than 90k on it. My dad used that incident to illustrate the principle of "built-in obsolescence" and it's a lesson I never forgot. Since that point, my family has not purchased another American car. Exception: until very recently, there were no Japanese full-size trucks, so we did get a Ford F250 to haul building supplies. American trucks do seem slightly more sturdy than the cars. Now we get old Mercedes diesels. You can get one for less than $3000, and they'll run for up to half a million miles if you're careful. It sure seems like a more financially sound strategy than purchasing a Dodge Caravan for four times that amount.
That said, I wish you luck with your Dodge Caravan / Plymouth Voyager. Maybe we just got a lemon, but I've never seen a lemon Mercedes (or Honda, or Toyota, or Nissan . . . ).
Umm... If I'm not mistaken, an ester is actually the product of a condensation reaction between an alchohol and a carboxylic acid. Thus, it would have the general structure R1-C-O-CO-R2 where R1 is the stuff in the alchohol and R2 is the stuff in the acid.
Pardon my shorthand. It's hard to show where bonds are using plain old text, so I just showed the ester moiety itself without any Rs. But you have too many carbons. The general form of an ester is R1-CO-O-R2, not R1-C-O-CO-R2. A carboxylic acid is R1-COOH, and the ester substitutes an R2 for a hydrogen. It's a notation issue. For the condensation of pentanol and acetic acid, you get CH3(CH2)4OCOCH3 (pentyl acetate, which smells like bananas). If your R contains all five carbons, it's just R1-OCOCH3, but it could also be written in your notation (R1-C-O-CO-R2) if you define R1 as a four carbon chain. And yes, I reversed your R1 and R2. Because -OH is a poor leaving group, esterifications are generally carried out using an acid chloride instead of the acid. That means they aren't true condensation reactions.
You're right about PET, though. The fact that PET is made by condensation rather than a chain polymerization is what makes it so impressive. Novel catalysts are what allowed PET to be used so widely (before their invention the reaction yields were too low).
There is a very important difference between someone who is just unfamiliar with particular field specific terminology, and someone who is not aware of basic concepts in a specific field.
You are blurring the line, or do not understand it.
There has been a great failure of science education in the last decade or so (well, ok, going back further than that). Jargon, and a haughty attitude that encourage it, are proliferating. This is a terrible thing from a communications / education point of view.
All I can say to that is, "guilty as charged". I guess I wasn't speaking to people who have no background in chemistry at all. When you eat sleep and breathe a discipline, it does indeed become hard to discern how much others know about it. Where do I start? Do I have to explain moles/molarity? What about molecules and atoms? Some of these words are not actually jargon, but vocabulary. Where do I draw the line? I think it's always a bit blurry.
The real problem here is people's unwillingness to learn foreign subject matter. If I bandied about a bunch of computer jargon, no one would make negative comments. But mention something about chemistry, and the first reply tells me to "speak fscking english." You think I knew what a pipeline was before reading slashdot? In the context of a CPU rather than petroleum? In college this was even worse. I took classes in both chemical engineering and liberal arts; the engineering people always said "why would I need to read a book?" while the liberal arts people said "why would I need to learn math?" When I see a computer vocab word I don't know, I often look it up to see what I'm missing. Why are the standards so different for chemistry?
I thought the guy was being a prick and a show-off, myself.
Sorry you feel that way. I actually really enjoy chemistry, but feel it's been given short shrift. In my major, there were two special classes for both physics and bio, both geared towards liberal-artsy-people, but no chemistry. Why the hell not?
The folks here on slashdot are certainly a varied crowd, but I've seen a whole lot more physics experts than chemistry experts. Electrical engineers have to take physics, but not chemisty. But you know what? Those fancy CPUs in your computer were made possible by photolithography, and organic chemistry is what allows the technology to get smaller and smaller. Photoresists have been the bottleneck for the past several generations of processors, although that may be about to change with non-optical processor manufacturing.
I personally appreciate it when a knowledgable person makes some clarifying comment in a forum. I know crap about SQL, Java, kernals, etc. But I do want to know more, and I don't think someone is a show-off prick just for sharing their knowledge. Would it have bothered you so much if I'd posted as AC?
Well, I bet there are a lot of people who've never failed chemistry who didn't know what a sterically hindered polyester is.
I'm also sure that there are a ton of smart chemistry students who, thanks to your pedantic "explanation" are no wiser.
I hope that you don't plan to teach chemistry to anyone who doesn't already know it.
Not everyone has studied organic chemistry.
(I didn't write the above comment; just trying to keep the thread from getting too deep)
Sorry, but anyone who studied (and passed) chemistry ought to know what steric hindrance is. If you're having trouble with my vocabulary, then I'll try to clarify.
Steric: having to do with space. As in, "I was unable to fit my couch in the Honda Civic due to steric hindrance."
Polymer: A molecule composed of three or more repeating units. This can be a heteropolymer (more than one type of repeating unit) or a homopolymer (only one type of repeating unit). The repeating unit is called a monomer, and often has an antiquated name. For example, ethylene is the antiquated name of ethene, a two-carbon hydrocarbon with a double bond between carbons. However, polyethylene has no double bonds (because the bonds opened during the polymerization).
Moiety: A part of a molecule that has a particular functionality. For example, the amino acids each have three moieties: the amino part, the acid part, and the side-group. For proline the amino part is the side group also. Functional groups (amines, esters, acids, alcohols, etc.) are all moieties.
Are we clear now? Or is that still too pedantic? BTW, I'm not a teacher and don't plan on being one in the near future. There are different levels of understanding of any subject. Just because some people don't know what a molecule is doesn't mean I should define every term when I mention them. To quote H. L. Mencken, "Those who can, do; those who can't, teach."
For those who failed chemistry . . .
The polymer used in this application is a sterically hindered polyester. An ester is a carboxylic acid with some sort of organic group replacing the hydrogen (i.e., O=C-O-CH3 is the methyl ester moiety).
Bulky groups sterically hinder a molecule, making part of the molecule inaccessible. One very common application is the sterically hindered base, like triethylamine. A normal amine is NH3, but a triethyl amine is N(CH3)3. The effect is that the compound raises a solution's pH, but cannot react with other functional groups easily. This helps prevent side reactions / biproducts.
t-BOC is one type of a sterically hindered protective group. Generally, protecting groups are removed as one of the final steps in order to get the desired product. This polyester has steric hindrance that protects the ester bond. But the article didn't say how that was accomplished. Adamantanes are another type of bulky group used to sterically hinder a molecule.
So how does it handle when the chip controlling all that fancy mag-lev suspension system stuff short circuits? Is there a safety mechanism, or do you just lose control and go careening off the road?
They didn't explain why they would have to go back later and remove the titanium scaffold. People have titanium hips, vertabrae, skull plates, and teeth--how come those don't have to be removed?
The only negative thing about this is finding a place to sit after the other people have already taken a spot before you.
You said it. I'd always be sitting on the side or in the very front. It sucks that I have to choose between getting a good seat and avoiding the ads. But since I can't stand being late, I can't avoid the ads.
Regardless of my feelings about product placement, I was not talking about that at all. I'm talking about ads running on screen like you'd see on television, before the previews start. Maybe they don't do that yet in Holland (if so, you're lucky).
Here, however, the evening ticket price is ~$7-8, then before the previews even start the commercials begin to roll. Usually 2-3 Coke commercials, one for Levi jeans, one for Virgin Mobile, two for Ax/Body Fantasies fragrances, and often a propaganda piece (helping others--pass it on!). I'm probably forgetting some, too. It's one of the few times I am forced to see commercials. No mute, nothing else I can do while waiting for them to end. Sometimes I cheer and clap, "Go Coca-Cola!" in an ironic manner. I wish the other patrons were as pissed about it as I am, because maybe if they complained we could nip this in the bud.
They damn-well better give a discount, for subjecting paying customers to unsolicited ads.
Ads on TV I can mute, but I can't stand ads in the movies, when you've already paid high dollar for a ticket, then while you're a captive audience they blast Coke/Blockbuster/Body Fantasies ads at you.
Actually, it's even easier than that. All a terrorist has to do to communicate securely is buy a cheap pre-pay mobile phone. Computer security and encryption are basically meaningless next to real-world methods of avoiding detection.
Except that recently a terror network was busted because of the chips in their prepaid mobile phones.
This link
mirrors the NYT article. A key point:
Mohammed was a victim of his own sloppiness, said a senior European intelligence official. He was meticulous about changing cellphones, but apparently he kept using the same SIM card.
It was sloppiness that tipped the authorities, but then they tracked him down by his supposedly anonymous mobile phone. And now the Swiss company that sells the cards is changing their policies, so it'll be even harder to communicate anonymously via mobile phone.
I don't know much about programming in general, but I can tell you the features I'd like to see in such an app: P2P connectivity to any raw IP address (no central server, of course) with the ability to send/receive multiple types of encrypted data. You could 1) send files on their own, 2) chat securely (typing, not speaking), and 3) enable streaming audio which could either be VOIP or an audio file.
For communications with people who have sorta slow connections, it would be nice to have a "walkie-talkie" mode rather than a continuous crappy connection. And ideally, this program would be multiplatform (Java? compile from source with a GUI wrapper?) and would work from behind a router. I'm still pretty confused about port forwarding, but that would have to be taken into account. I know I've had trouble setting up an FTP server behind a router.
If something like this already exists, please let me know.
This has been attempted, so you know what the feds did? Broke in, installed a keylogger and left. Broke in again, took the passphrase and took all they needed.
Valid point, but doesn't apply if I'm using an OS that has any sort of protection (i.e., they'd have to be root to install anything) or if I use a laptop that I take with me everywhere (or possibly put in a safe).
I thought rubber hose cryptography was pretty cool, but the link I visited seems to be down (or the project is now defunct: http://www.rubberhose.org/) Anyone know what happened to the project? Whatever--thanks to the wayback machine for
this link. Briefly,
Rubberhose transparently and deniably encrypts disk data, minimising the effectiveness of warrants, coersive interrogations and other compulsive mechanims, such as U.K RIP legislation. Rubberhose differs from conventional disk encryption systems in that it has an advanced modular architecture, self-test suite, is more secure, portable, utilises information hiding (steganography / deniable cryptography), works with any file system and has source freely available. Currently supported ciphers are DES, 3DES, IDEA, RC5, RC6, Blowfish, Twofish and CAST.
Written by Julian Assange, Ralf P. Weinmann and Suelette Dreyfus, Rubberhose is currently available for Linux 2.2. Userland daemons and tools are highly portable. NetBSD & FreeBSD kernel modules are nearing completion.
I guess I should be more precise, since it seems "rubber hose cryptology" is the process of beating someone with a hose until they give you the key. But the project had the goal of plausible deniability. It was impossible to determine how many encrypted objects were on a disk, so you could have a decoy encrypted message in case someone did beat the crap out of you.
Of course, removable media themselves are a good way to avoid a keylogger program. Go to some public terminal, plug in your USB drive, and you're set. The feds can't possibly install keyloggers on all public terminals, or sift the wheat from the chaff if they did collect that much info.
Any person who rolls their own VOIP can avoid being wiretapped at all. If I were a criminal who wanted to not be detected, I sure as hell wouldn't do my illicit communications over a regular phone, anyway. Much easier to just encrypt text and send it through insecure email. Even if the email is intercepted, who cares?
Public/private keys are great and all, but for organized crime it would work just as well to use a symmetric cipher and just share the keys. If the criminals are all working together, it shouldn't matter if they all know the key.
Anyway, it always rubs me the wrong way when the feds demand to have backdoor access to spy on us. It's bad enough they have the right to tap a phone at all, but now they're trying to make sure that ability is built into the software? No thanks--I'll use an offshore VOIP provider who doesn't have those nasty requirements.
We were eating dinner at a restraunt once, and John Gilmore ordered some crab soup. I teased him that I considered crabs to be insects, and he wasn't supposed to eat insects because he was a vegetarian.
It's very hard to convey tone via written word alone, so I apologize if I'm missing something . . . but why would it be acceptable for a vegetarian to eat a crab, but not an insect?
Gilmore has radical ideas about Insect Control. We agree on the general principles, but disagree about how to go about implementing it.
I think the question of implementation applies to most disagreements. It's all about priorities--what are you willing to sacrifice to attain a certain goal?
That doesn't apply to the morality police. It doesn't matter to them whether you're hurting anyone or not--if your behavior doesn't conform to their morals, they want you to stop. I consider those people to be very dangerous, since you can never have a rational discussion with someone who thinks they are better than you.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't know what kind of math you're doing.
If each edge of the cube is 1000 long, then 1000 x 1000 x 1000 = 1 x 10^9 = 1 billion. If you thought the poster meant 1000 cubes per face, then each edge would be 1000^0.5 long (which is an irrational, non-integer number--not possible with discrete sugar cubes. Sorry if it's supposed to be discreet, but I can never remember which is which). That means the total volume would be 1000 x 1000^0.5 which is certainly not a million. Maybe you were thinking a cube with 100 cubes per edge, since 100 x 100 x 100 = 1 million
In any case, it's a hell of a lot of sugar.
I've heard Western Digital has improved, but I'm still wary. Have you ever actually had a DeskStar crash? Mine has run smoothly ever since I got it. Were there certain lots that were especially prone to failure?
Is this a survey? Then I vote vaporware. Is digital alchemy kinda like Wicca?
Exactly. They wouldn't.
Do note that I was talking about areas of users not being able to connect to anyone else. P2P is not the same as explicit IP addresses like on the web. For example, it would be a lot harder for me to get to slashdot by only clicking on links than by typing the address into my browser's bar.
That wouldn't solve the problem of local areas of users that are disconnected from everyone but themselves. I know this is an issue with other p2p apps. You can only connect to someone who's in your area, and sometimes that just isn't good enough. I know China is in many respects isolated from the rest of the internet.
Very interesting. My family's Caravan died before it ever got yellow headlights. Thanks for the response ;)
This is completely anecdotal, and in this case the expression "your mileage may vary" is especially apt, but the Dodge Caravan is the reason why I will probably never buy an American car. Or van, in this case. My family made the mistake of getting one several years ago. I believe it was a 1985 manual transmission (not many of those made, either). That piece of shit just kept falling apart, piece by piece. The interior plastic crap broke off at the slightest touch. The ceiling fell down (the cloth covering, that is). But the coup de grace happened at the most inopportune time. We were on a family trip, about 1000 miles from home, when the engine exploded. I don't know which part of it broke, but it sprayed oil all over the windshield while we were on the highway. Luckily my dad had plenty of spare oil, and for about 50 miles we would stop every 5 miles, wipe off the windshield enough to see, add another quart of oil, and get back on the highway going 35 mph.
That engine had less than 90k on it. My dad used that incident to illustrate the principle of "built-in obsolescence" and it's a lesson I never forgot. Since that point, my family has not purchased another American car. Exception: until very recently, there were no Japanese full-size trucks, so we did get a Ford F250 to haul building supplies. American trucks do seem slightly more sturdy than the cars. Now we get old Mercedes diesels. You can get one for less than $3000, and they'll run for up to half a million miles if you're careful. It sure seems like a more financially sound strategy than purchasing a Dodge Caravan for four times that amount.
That said, I wish you luck with your Dodge Caravan / Plymouth Voyager. Maybe we just got a lemon, but I've never seen a lemon Mercedes (or Honda, or Toyota, or Nissan . . . ).
Though I must admit I had to consult this table to figure out how to make less-than and greater-than symbols.
Pardon my shorthand. It's hard to show where bonds are using plain old text, so I just showed the ester moiety itself without any Rs. But you have too many carbons. The general form of an ester is R1-CO-O-R2, not R1-C-O-CO-R2. A carboxylic acid is R1-COOH, and the ester substitutes an R2 for a hydrogen. It's a notation issue. For the condensation of pentanol and acetic acid, you get CH3(CH2)4OCOCH3 (pentyl acetate, which smells like bananas). If your R contains all five carbons, it's just R1-OCOCH3, but it could also be written in your notation (R1-C-O-CO-R2) if you define R1 as a four carbon chain. And yes, I reversed your R1 and R2. Because -OH is a poor leaving group, esterifications are generally carried out using an acid chloride instead of the acid. That means they aren't true condensation reactions.
You're right about PET, though. The fact that PET is made by condensation rather than a chain polymerization is what makes it so impressive. Novel catalysts are what allowed PET to be used so widely (before their invention the reaction yields were too low).
The real problem here is people's unwillingness to learn foreign subject matter. If I bandied about a bunch of computer jargon, no one would make negative comments. But mention something about chemistry, and the first reply tells me to "speak fscking english." You think I knew what a pipeline was before reading slashdot? In the context of a CPU rather than petroleum? In college this was even worse. I took classes in both chemical engineering and liberal arts; the engineering people always said "why would I need to read a book?" while the liberal arts people said "why would I need to learn math?" When I see a computer vocab word I don't know, I often look it up to see what I'm missing. Why are the standards so different for chemistry?
Sorry you feel that way. I actually really enjoy chemistry, but feel it's been given short shrift. In my major, there were two special classes for both physics and bio, both geared towards liberal-artsy-people, but no chemistry. Why the hell not?
The folks here on slashdot are certainly a varied crowd, but I've seen a whole lot more physics experts than chemistry experts. Electrical engineers have to take physics, but not chemisty. But you know what? Those fancy CPUs in your computer were made possible by photolithography, and organic chemistry is what allows the technology to get smaller and smaller. Photoresists have been the bottleneck for the past several generations of processors, although that may be about to change with non-optical processor manufacturing.
I personally appreciate it when a knowledgable person makes some clarifying comment in a forum. I know crap about SQL, Java, kernals, etc. But I do want to know more, and I don't think someone is a show-off prick just for sharing their knowledge. Would it have bothered you so much if I'd posted as AC?
Of course you're right. My mistake.
Sorry, but anyone who studied (and passed) chemistry ought to know what steric hindrance is. If you're having trouble with my vocabulary, then I'll try to clarify.
Steric: having to do with space. As in, "I was unable to fit my couch in the Honda Civic due to steric hindrance."
Polymer: A molecule composed of three or more repeating units. This can be a heteropolymer (more than one type of repeating unit) or a homopolymer (only one type of repeating unit). The repeating unit is called a monomer, and often has an antiquated name. For example, ethylene is the antiquated name of ethene, a two-carbon hydrocarbon with a double bond between carbons. However, polyethylene has no double bonds (because the bonds opened during the polymerization).
Moiety: A part of a molecule that has a particular functionality. For example, the amino acids each have three moieties: the amino part, the acid part, and the side-group. For proline the amino part is the side group also. Functional groups (amines, esters, acids, alcohols, etc.) are all moieties.
Are we clear now? Or is that still too pedantic? BTW, I'm not a teacher and don't plan on being one in the near future. There are different levels of understanding of any subject. Just because some people don't know what a molecule is doesn't mean I should define every term when I mention them. To quote H. L. Mencken, "Those who can, do; those who can't, teach."
The polymer used in this application is a sterically hindered polyester. An ester is a carboxylic acid with some sort of organic group replacing the hydrogen (i.e., O=C-O-CH3 is the methyl ester moiety).
Bulky groups sterically hinder a molecule, making part of the molecule inaccessible. One very common application is the sterically hindered base, like triethylamine. A normal amine is NH3, but a triethyl amine is N(CH3)3. The effect is that the compound raises a solution's pH, but cannot react with other functional groups easily. This helps prevent side reactions / biproducts.
t-BOC is one type of a sterically hindered protective group. Generally, protecting groups are removed as one of the final steps in order to get the desired product. This polyester has steric hindrance that protects the ester bond. But the article didn't say how that was accomplished. Adamantanes are another type of bulky group used to sterically hinder a molecule.
So how does it handle when the chip controlling all that fancy mag-lev suspension system stuff short circuits? Is there a safety mechanism, or do you just lose control and go careening off the road?
So they did implant the titanium mesh.
They didn't explain why they would have to go back later and remove the titanium scaffold. People have titanium hips, vertabrae, skull plates, and teeth--how come those don't have to be removed?
You said it. I'd always be sitting on the side or in the very front. It sucks that I have to choose between getting a good seat and avoiding the ads. But since I can't stand being late, I can't avoid the ads.
Here, however, the evening ticket price is ~$7-8, then before the previews even start the commercials begin to roll. Usually 2-3 Coke commercials, one for Levi jeans, one for Virgin Mobile, two for Ax/Body Fantasies fragrances, and often a propaganda piece (helping others--pass it on!). I'm probably forgetting some, too. It's one of the few times I am forced to see commercials. No mute, nothing else I can do while waiting for them to end. Sometimes I cheer and clap, "Go Coca-Cola!" in an ironic manner. I wish the other patrons were as pissed about it as I am, because maybe if they complained we could nip this in the bud.
Ads on TV I can mute, but I can't stand ads in the movies, when you've already paid high dollar for a ticket, then while you're a captive audience they blast Coke/Blockbuster/Body Fantasies ads at you.
Arrgh.
1) send files on their own,
2) chat securely (typing, not speaking), and
3) enable streaming audio which could either be VOIP or an audio file.
For communications with people who have sorta slow connections, it would be nice to have a "walkie-talkie" mode rather than a continuous crappy connection. And ideally, this program would be multiplatform (Java? compile from source with a GUI wrapper?) and would work from behind a router. I'm still pretty confused about port forwarding, but that would have to be taken into account. I know I've had trouble setting up an FTP server behind a router.
If something like this already exists, please let me know.
Valid point, but doesn't apply if I'm using an OS that has any sort of protection (i.e., they'd have to be root to install anything) or if I use a laptop that I take with me everywhere (or possibly put in a safe).
I thought rubber hose cryptography was pretty cool, but the link I visited seems to be down (or the project is now defunct: http://www.rubberhose.org/) Anyone know what happened to the project? Whatever--thanks to the wayback machine for this link. Briefly,
I guess I should be more precise, since it seems "rubber hose cryptology" is the process of beating someone with a hose until they give you the key. But the project had the goal of plausible deniability. It was impossible to determine how many encrypted objects were on a disk, so you could have a decoy encrypted message in case someone did beat the crap out of you.
Of course, removable media themselves are a good way to avoid a keylogger program. Go to some public terminal, plug in your USB drive, and you're set. The feds can't possibly install keyloggers on all public terminals, or sift the wheat from the chaff if they did collect that much info.
Public/private keys are great and all, but for organized crime it would work just as well to use a symmetric cipher and just share the keys. If the criminals are all working together, it shouldn't matter if they all know the key.
Anyway, it always rubs me the wrong way when the feds demand to have backdoor access to spy on us. It's bad enough they have the right to tap a phone at all, but now they're trying to make sure that ability is built into the software? No thanks--I'll use an offshore VOIP provider who doesn't have those nasty requirements.
That doesn't apply to the morality police. It doesn't matter to them whether you're hurting anyone or not--if your behavior doesn't conform to their morals, they want you to stop. I consider those people to be very dangerous, since you can never have a rational discussion with someone who thinks they are better than you.