Yes, that's what I meant. The existing Burans are not usable, but it should be possible to build a new one.
Several years ago, I've read article in Russian space magazine about it - surprisingly much of required infrastructure for Energia+Buran is still present.
So if you can point to several cases of fradulent deals being carried out using forged seals, it sort of shows that this system of seals is already broken. Any system is either "broken" or impossible to use.
You wouldn't have to know once the identity theft is uncovered. How? You have no way to protest the deal. I've read about people losing hundreds thousands dollars on lawsuits to protest the fraudulent loans.
No, but it would fly in the face of someone proclaiming how easy it is to spot counterfeits when billions and billions in fake currency floats around at any one time. No, that just means it's that protection measures of paper currency are adequate for the current situation.
I don't want 100% secure system which is also unusable and/or expensive.
So if someone is able to get a $100,000 mortage using a forged version of your seal doesn't that sort of tell you that your system of seals has already failed? No. The system fails if you don't have means to prove that the mortgage was a result of an identity theft (I remember I've read about several such horror stories in the news).
Do you have any actual evidence that they do this? I've read stories of people scamming hundreds of thousands of dollars when using fake hankos. Yes, I live in Russia and I'm the owner of a small company. Each company in Russia must have the company seal (with imprints registered in a state registry), this is a strong anti-fraud measure. I personally know about several causes of appealed fraudulent deals.
You can certainly scam hundreds thousands of dollars using fake seals, I don't doubt it. However, the victim of identity theft at least won't have to absorb the damage.
So that's a no that you didn't even read the article you linked? You sqawked on and on about how the fraud was easy to spot but the article you linked was saying that it was getting easier and easier to commit hanko fraud with modern technology. Did you perhaps fail at reading comprehension? Yes, I've read it. I fail to see how it contradicts me.
It has also become easier to create counterfeit money, you just print them on a laser printer! Does it spell the end of paper money? I don't think so.
And how many times do you expect someone's seal imprint is actually looked at under a microscope? Never? For example, when you appeal a $100000 mortgage.
Did you even bother to read the wiki article that you linked? My brother works at a criminal lab:)
Your solution is about as crappy as having people write their name on an index card and using that as a basis of ID verification. No. I don't really care about $100-$200 frauds (which form the bulk of frauds). Merchants will just absorb the cost like they do with credit card frauds.
However, if someones takes a mortgage using a fake seal I want a reliable way to appeal it. Seals provide such a way, signatures do not.
It's impossible to make a perfect copy of a seal, which can't be distinguished using a microscope. The pattern of micro-features of a seal is unique (assuming that it's a wood or plastic seal, it's not true for metallic seals).
Besides, detecting a fake seal is fairly easy, it's almost exactly like matching a bullet to a gun using micro-grooves on bullets.
Signature expertise, on the other hand, is a highly subjective process.
There was a splash in Russian-speaking blogs about this law. It's NOT clear what they mean by "end-user devices". It may be interpreted only as a WiFi card inside your notebook, for example. So you'll still need to register your wireless router.
In short, that law is just a plain money-grab. And will be probably ignored by anyone: "Strictness or Russian laws is alleviated by their optionality" (sorry, it sounds much better in Russian).
Nope, Putin got elected not because of nostalgia about the USSR. He got elected because he was thought to be able to stop a civil war in Chechnya and bring at least some political and economical stability.
Most of people in Russia are now somewhat nostalgic about the USSR, but nowhere close to choosing president because he promises to return back to the USSR.
You can _physically_ store DNA samples. It's not hard and quite cheap.
Suppose you need to store 100 million DNA samples, each sample takes 5 square centimeters in a drawer 5 centimeters high. So you'll need 12500 of 2-meter high cabinets. That's certainly within realm of possibility and probably won't even cost that much.
The complete human DNA sequence is also not really long - just about 700Mb (it fits on one CD). The complete DNA record for 1 billion people will require about 70PB of data (you can compress DNA archives more than ten times). Storing that much data is not really practical yet (though it is possible), but it almost certainly will be in a few years.
Slashdot Mirror
Seen in someone's signature:
Intelligence: Finding an error in a Knuth text.
Stupidity: Cashing that $2.56 check you got.
It's a bit different, unlike Space Shuttle in Buran main engines are not in the shuttle itself.
BTW, found an interesting page on Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_heavy_lift_launch_systems
Protons and Arianes should replace Space Shuttle nicely for heavy lifting. And Soyuz should be enough for now for crewed flights.
Yes, that's what I meant. The existing Burans are not usable, but it should be possible to build a new one.
Several years ago, I've read article in Russian space magazine about it - surprisingly much of required infrastructure for Energia+Buran is still present.
No, there are several viable alternatives. For example, Russia has Buran spaceship. They just cost way too much.
For now, Progress cargo ships and Soyuz crew ships should work just fine.
Nope. Sun JVM has always been much more open than VB.
You could ALWAYS download sources of JVM (I'm not completely sure about Sun JDK 1.0, but you could download JVM sources since 1997 for sure).
You could even port them to another platform (look at FreeBSD port, for example).
The only problem: the license for this code was not open.
USA also _buys_ food in other countries. Reduced internal food supply causes less exports and more international purchases.
I don't want 100% secure system which is also unusable and/or expensive.
To serve as a cheap and easy-to-use _failsafe_.
You can certainly scam hundreds thousands of dollars using fake seals, I don't doubt it. However, the victim of identity theft at least won't have to absorb the damage. So that's a no that you didn't even read the article you linked? You sqawked on and on about how the fraud was easy to spot but the article you linked was saying that it was getting easier and easier to commit hanko fraud with modern technology. Did you perhaps fail at reading comprehension? Yes, I've read it. I fail to see how it contradicts me.
It has also become easier to create counterfeit money, you just print them on a laser printer! Does it spell the end of paper money? I don't think so.
However, if someones takes a mortgage using a fake seal I want a reliable way to appeal it. Seals provide such a way, signatures do not.
It's impossible to make a perfect copy of a seal, which can't be distinguished using a microscope. The pattern of micro-features of a seal is unique (assuming that it's a wood or plastic seal, it's not true for metallic seals).
Besides, detecting a fake seal is fairly easy, it's almost exactly like matching a bullet to a gun using micro-grooves on bullets.
Signature expertise, on the other hand, is a highly subjective process.
Cables along the Trans-Siberian Railroad already exist since mid-90's, they are operated by Transtelecom: http://www.transtk.ru/www/nsf/netmap.nsf/eng!open
Probably, there's not much demand for Russian-Chinese traffic to justify peering between Transtelecom and some Chinese company.
ID cards are fine for identification.
:) ).
But you also need means for authentication. Signatures are not good, they can be easily forged.
However, there are low-tech measures, like personal seals (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inkan) which are almost impossible to forge.
Personal SSL certificates? Or even better, a small personal device like eToken? Maybe.
Personally, I like low-tech more (maybe because I'm a programmer
No. This article cites a regulation active since 2004. However the new regulation may have overriden the old one.
The situation is far from clear. It seems, that RSOC just backed down because of the public backlash.
Actually, no.
There was a splash in Russian-speaking blogs about this law. It's NOT clear what they mean by "end-user devices". It may be interpreted only as a WiFi card inside your notebook, for example. So you'll still need to register your wireless router.
In short, that law is just a plain money-grab. And will be probably ignored by anyone: "Strictness or Russian laws is alleviated by their optionality" (sorry, it sounds much better in Russian).
Nope, Putin got elected not because of nostalgia about the USSR. He got elected because he was thought to be able to stop a civil war in Chechnya and bring at least some political and economical stability.
Most of people in Russia are now somewhat nostalgic about the USSR, but nowhere close to choosing president because he promises to return back to the USSR.
The last one probably won't be registered - it's sounds too close to a Russian obscenity :)
You can _physically_ store DNA samples. It's not hard and quite cheap.
Suppose you need to store 100 million DNA samples, each sample takes 5 square centimeters in a drawer 5 centimeters high. So you'll need 12500 of 2-meter high cabinets. That's certainly within realm of possibility and probably won't even cost that much.
The complete human DNA sequence is also not really long - just about 700Mb (it fits on one CD). The complete DNA record for 1 billion people will require about 70PB of data (you can compress DNA archives more than ten times). Storing that much data is not really practical yet (though it is possible), but it almost certainly will be in a few years.
Yes, I can't find it in the spec and there seem to be problems: http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/lofiversion/index.php/t16033.html
But it should not be hard to add, just a small tag with special format describing channel mapping.
We use static IPs :)
??
http://xiph.org/vorbis/doc/stereo.html - there is joint stereo support in OGG.
OGG format also has 5.1 support but I have not seen it 'in the wild'.
OGG Vorbis is considered to be one of the best (if not THE best) audio codec.
I can argue that.
First of all, it might not "just install". I have a lot of programs from 90-s and early 2000-s that just DoNotWork(tm) on XP/Vista.
Second, you STILL can get DLL hell if application tries to be nice and uses shared DLLs.
Third, you can get SECURITY hell if application does not try to play nice and stores private copies of DLLs.
Performance hit is noticeable only on copying large files over gigabit network.
Modern CPUs are fast enough for IPSec and our Cisco routers use hardware-accelerated encryption.