The paper is interesting because, although speculative in many regards, the mechanisms they present would possibly give the dimension of spacetime independent of the validity of string theory. String theorists have never quite looked reality squarely in the eye: you can only derive predictions (in the form of a spectrum) in 1, 2, 4, and 8 dimensions due to some complicated issues in harmonic analysis (it is only in those dimensions that a resolvent exists--associated with the real numbers, complex numbers, quaternions and octonians--and the spectrum is given by the poles of the resolvent). One of the interesting issues here is that if the universe is of one of the "off" dimensions, then there is no possibility of a predictive theory fully descriptive of nature. There can be no "final theory" in such a case, due to fundamental incapacity of our present mathematics. This strikes me as a big deal issue, that ought to be of intense intense interest to other physicists, except the math is really unpleasant. (I am a mathematical physicist to whom this was pointed out and, although the point is easy to see would be a monster to put in publishable form and I didn't have 2 years to spare on it.)
A couple of years ago they broke a ring here in Denver which was cracking banks (card issuers), forwarding the data to Montreal where it was forwarded to New York and some guys with a lot of vowels in their last names. The entire premise that this is 250 names a year per cracker is simply not relevant to the business of stealing ID's: it is not just one guy with the names and info, and you have a machine in place to get a hell of a lot more out of it than one guy could get. These guys are maximizing their returns!
Slashdot Mirror
The paper is interesting because, although speculative in many regards, the mechanisms they present would possibly give the dimension of spacetime independent of the validity of string theory. String theorists have never quite looked reality squarely in the eye: you can only derive predictions (in the form of a spectrum) in 1, 2, 4, and 8 dimensions due to some complicated issues in harmonic analysis (it is only in those dimensions that a resolvent exists--associated with the real numbers, complex numbers, quaternions and octonians--and the spectrum is given by the poles of the resolvent). One of the interesting issues here is that if the universe is of one of the "off" dimensions, then there is no possibility of a predictive theory fully descriptive of nature. There can be no "final theory" in such a case, due to fundamental incapacity of our present mathematics. This strikes me as a big deal issue, that ought to be of intense intense interest to other physicists, except the math is really unpleasant. (I am a mathematical physicist to whom this was pointed out and, although the point is easy to see would be a monster to put in publishable form and I didn't have 2 years to spare on it.)
A couple of years ago they broke a ring here in Denver which was cracking banks (card issuers), forwarding the data to Montreal where it was forwarded to New York and some guys with a lot of vowels in their last names. The entire premise that this is 250 names a year per cracker is simply not relevant to the business of stealing ID's: it is not just one guy with the names and info, and you have a machine in place to get a hell of a lot more out of it than one guy could get. These guys are maximizing their returns!