While you are correct, many spammers use botnets, which means they have infiltrated a large number of computers and installed malicious software on them. This arguably makes them hackers (some of them atleast, some can be characterized more as script kiddies). So it's not a huge error.
Also, one might argue that what spammers do is penetrate spam filters, just as other hackers penetrate computer security. It's a shaky argument, but it's not completely invalid. It all depends on how you define a hacker.
As for the RSA being cracked part, it is true that using a short key (1024 bits) might be compromised (just to be clear: it hasn't been cracked yet, it's just that it could be in the forseeable future), but RSA itself is still very secure. Use a 2048-bit key, and you'll be safe for a century, or a 4096-bit key and you'll be safe for a few thousand milleniums.
While it is true that in the early days, the goverenment didn't want these algorithms getting out (they said that giving a lecture on RSA would be punishable as a weapon smuggling offence), there is no report that they hassled the people making them. I mean, for instance, Whitfield Diffie has never said such a thing. And I've never heard anyone else claim it. However, if you say it's a firsthand account, I won't dispute you, you know better in that case.
As for the wikipedia article, if you look two paragraphs up it says: "Many people have tried to find classical polynomial-time algorithms for it and failed, and therefore it is widely suspected to be outside P".;) While there is by no means consensus in the field, most people feel that it is unlikely to be in P. Also a quick note: there is a difference between NP and NP-Complete. Many people think that they are synonymous, but they aren't. I'm not sure if you're under that impression, but I though that I'd clear that up, just in case:)
The block size isn't really important when it comes to cryptography atleast after a certain point: a 128-bit block cipher is essentially as hard as a 256-bit cipher (actually that's not entirely true, 256-bit is alot harder, just that 128-bit is hard enough for it not to matter anymore). For a 128-bit block size to become an issue, you would have to encrypt around 256 exabytes. Since it is estimated that the sum of human knowledge (that is, information created by humans, audio, video, text, etc.) is about 12 exabytes, it would have to be ALOT of information for it to be compromised;) However, if you want, Rijndael (ie. AES) comes in a 128, 192 and 256 bit-block sizes. Take your pick.
And no, I don't work for the CIA (I work for the Greatest and Noblest Order of Masons, and we rule the world from behind the scenes!!!! Ahh, crap, now I'll have to kill ya....). I'm just saying, there are free tools which provides absolute security, and are completely open source. We have arrived at a point in history where we can store information and know that it is safe for perpetuity. Modern ciphers are that good.
That situation is not very different from the one I am in. I'm going to vote in three elections and on referendum. The elections are for the parliament, the local election and the slightly less local election (somewhat similar to federal/state/local in the states), the referendum is about whether we should have car-tolls in Stockholm. I will get four envelopes, in each I will put in the ballot of the party of my chosing (and a yes or no ballot the case of the referendum), I will hand them to an official who will put them into their respective boxes. Why couldn't you do that over there? There is only a few people that you can vote for, right? Why not have one that says "I vote for Janet Napolitano" and another that says "I vote for [name of Repulican candidate]"? I don't see why that wouldn't work. The state obviously provides all the ballots, readily available at the voting-place. Remember that there are 7 major political parties here, and there are three elections, and we still cope, so the whole "it would be too many ballots" arguemnt doesn't fly with me.
However, I suspect that your point was that this particular system of voting is not ideal in every case. Fair enough, but there are certainly different ways you could adapt it so that it does work, without any ambiguity or difficulty. Everytime I hear someone talking about why we should have electronic voting, they always say "electronic voting does this better" or something like this. Look, we have been voting for stuff since ancient greece! There is no problem with coming up with a good voting system! This has been solved! There is absolutely no good reasons to introduce additional complications by using machines, manual voting works perfectly. Another thing people say is that it would aid people with disabilities. Wouldn't a much better situation be, say, getting a HUMAN to help them??? Arn't people alot more helpful if you are blind than a cold machine?
PS. If I were in your situation, I would probably vote for McCain aswell. I mean, we a agree on very little politically, but what a man he is. An inspiration. The democratic candidate would have to be absolutely stellar for me to vote for them if McCain is the opponent.
No, you're wrong, it's different when it comes to voting.
First off, can you tell me anything that is better with electronic voting vs. manual voting? The only thing I can think of is perhaps faster vote-counting, but that is a very weak argument, considering how fast manual voting (in systems that work) is.
Meanwhile, there are many, many downsides. There is always the possibility of error, like this istance has proven. This is a fact: computers break down. They always have, and they always will. There is no guarantee that they won't. Normally, this is acceptable, a computer that breaks down isn't that big of a deal, This is not the case when it comes to elections. A correct, democratic systems needs complete, 100% reliability. Even a few votes getting lost, even a few people who can't vote because somebody took a tire-iron to the local voting machines is a catastrophy.
Second, there is too big of a chance for fraud. We will have to trust that no one tampers with the machines, that the machines themselves are working, that the correct person is voting, that all machines get registered, etc. This is something that is impossible to completely insure yourself against. However, if you interface with another human that can check it, that makes sure everything is done correctly, then you're fine.
You used the example of the car/buggy. That is a very poor example, because cars provided substantial benefits, this is not true with electronic voting. A better example would perhaps be commercial airplanes. Can a computer fly an airplane? Sure it could, it wouldn't even be too hard to do! It would be cheaper (pilots are very expensive), so why not do it? Because we simply cannot trust computers that much. A Blue Screen of Death would become eerily literal.
Some things humans do very well. Flying airplanes is one. Elections is another. It is idiotic to replace these tasks with computers. Especially since the human way works so well.
These arguments are simply not valid, for one very good reason: The rest of the democratic world does just fine with manual voting. When was the last time you heard that there were problems counting votes in Germany, or France, or the UK, or Norway, or ancient Greece, or whatever.
First off, why you people even need to make an X on a long list of candidates is beyond me. Here in Sweden (where there'll be an election on Sunday) each party has its own ballot, you simply stick that in an envelope, give it to a voting-official which checks your identity and suffrage, that voting offical puts the envelope in a box, and you're done! No confusion over votes, no-one can vote twice, no arguments over which candidates are first on the list (you can get ballots from all the parties in the parliament right there, and there are usually people handing out ballots for the other parties at the voting station). I repeat, for the rest of the world, this is not a problem,
As a plus, if it is desired, this can easily be counted by machine. Since each ballot is unique, you could easily have a machine recognize from what party it comes from. Not that you'd have too, it shouldn't take more than, say, 6-12 hours after the polls have closed to have a result counted by hand. In the last few years, I've never heard of any democratic and free country, that doesn't have wide-spread voter fraud (ie. psuedo-democracies, that deliberatly tamper with elections) messing up an election. Except for America.
I can think of very few things that are more stupid than elecronic voting. The manual system works perfectly, and has done so for a century! Why, ohh, why, mess it up.
Incase you're curious, "ou" is properly called a diphthong. It's a great word, it has all those great consonants making it hard to pronounce, and not many people know what it means, but enough people so that it has not fallen out of usage. The perfect show-off word.
(a diphthong is basically a sound made from two vowels, like "ou" in "about" or "ea" in "fear", if you pronounce "fear" like the brits)
In the UK they actually have another act, specifically to protect the right of governments to use the Because Act. It's the great Watchagonna do 'bout it? Act of 1843. It was enacted because Lord Featherbottom, a member of parliament, had been getting grief from a certain Mr. Parsley who had succesfully used the What defence against the good Lord. The court case was closely monitored in the media at the time, even though it has gone down in history as the most boring trial of all time. Excerpt from transcript:
LORD FEATHERBOTTOM: Because!
MR. PARSLEY: Because what?
LORD FEATHERBOTTOM: Because!
MR. PARSLEY: Because what?
LORD FEATHERBOTTOM: Because!
MR. PARSLEY: Because what?
LORD FEATHERBOTTOM: Because!
MR. PARSLEY: Because what?
And so on and so forth. It was a war of attrition, and on the fourth straight day the elderly lord collapsed, and thus his case was lost. Following that incident, Featherbottom made a rousing speech to the parliament and got his act, well, enacted.
As an interesting historical sidenote, Featherbottom and Parsley eventually became good friends and formed, and were the first presidents of, the London Fine Cheese Society, an organisation famous to this day. Britannia never smelled the same.
XP does ipv6 perfectly, you just have to turn it on (WinKey+R -> "cmd" -> "ipv6 install"). If Vista just "had it", there would be no difference, would there? No, Vista will support ipv6 natively and it will by default be turned on.
Dude, you suck! I've just spent the better half of an hour rifling through my old textbooks looking for a damn identity I could use. I fucking hate sterling numbers, atleast the binomial theorem is easy to memorize (and remember, a few years later now). I will admit defeat if you can produce one, then you'll be the über-l337 math-guy of this discussion.
It isn't that hard to do it heuristically, and simply guess what it is, divide, refine guess, divide, refine guess, etc. After three of four iterations, you've probably got it. Not at all an optimal method, but it's easy to remember, it's what I used to do before I physically chained my TI-83+ to my body so that I would never be without it.
You could also try to memorize a few of the terms in the binomial expansion of (1 + x)^.5 and start plugging, but that's alot harder. Hmm, now I'm curious, how do you do it by hand? What is the method?
Exactly. They also might be cautious accidentally altering things on the drive, timestamps for instance are very useful for such investigations. You never do it from inside the system, you always do it from an outside OS.
Yes, I did know that, because as it happends, I am not an idiot. The left party changed their name for a reason, they stopped advocating communist ideas. The fact thay you think someone is communist because they want public schools, hospitals and healthcare shows that you have no idea whatsoever what communism is. Having a large welfare state is not communism. Making sure that everyone can recieve the most basic needs from the government, an education, healthcare from the best healthcare system in the world and for their children to be placed in a safe environment is not communism. I'm personally for such policies, but even if I weren't, I wouldn't be stupid enough to call it communism. No one with even the slightest knowledge of political science would.
Stop saying big words you don't understand. You look foolish doing it.
That's just plain wrong. Neither the Left party nor the Environmental party have communist ideals, and both of them believe in private companies. Just because they believe in higher taxes and a generous welfare state does not make them communist. It's a complete lie, there is not an ounce of truth in what you are saying.
My fellow parent swede is obviously correct, there is no direct correlation to the Rep's and the Dem's of the United States, mostly because the entire swedish political spectrum is shifted very much to the left. However, to clarify for our american friends, there are indeed two political "blocks", the red parties (the lefties) and the blue parties (the righties, that is the colours are reversed compared to in the states). The left consists of the Social Democrats, the Left-party and the Environmental (green) party. The right consists of the Moderates, the Peoples-party (the liberals), the Center party and the Christian Democrats. While there are indeed alot of differences between the parties in the respective blocks, when the it comes down to brass-tax, that's how the parties are going to ally themselves. Either the three-party left coalition wins (in which case the Social Democrats control the executive branch), or the four-party right coalition wins (in which case the Moderats control the executive branch). So while not as clear, there is certainly a two-side dichotomy to swedish politics, just like in american politics.
Re:A bit OT, but since we're on the Swedish electi
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While I haven't seen any recent polls on them specifically, they will almost certainly have no impact whatsoever. To get a seat in parliament, you need atleast 4% of the popular vote (this is to weed out small, very fringe parties, such as nazis and pirates;) and in the last election, around 5.3 million people voted. 4% of 5.3 million is 212000 votes. They have no chance in hell of getting that many.
Much more interesting are two other tiny parties, FI (feministic initiative) and a party that's called the June-list. The first one was formed as a response to a percieved lack of feministic issues being discussed in the national theatre (I'm a rabid feminist, it's an extremely important issue for me, but unfortunatly, the leaders if FI are, well, insane). The second one, Juni-listan (the June-list), was a party that was formed at the last swedish referendum (whether we should join the European Monatery Union and start using the Euro) as a rabid anti-EU party. Both are now trying to get into the parliament. It will be interesting to see what happens with them, but the Pirate Party has unfortunatly no chance of getting any seats. I mean, even I, a slashdotter who takes the copyright issue seriously, won't vote for them. I'm sorry, but there is too much at stake in this election.
Look, Mr. Partain, you were kinda funny at first, but know I just feel sorry for you. Maybe you should reexamine why you even visit slashdot, maybe you'd like some other site better, like myspace or youtube. They have neat videos at youtube, I bet you'd like it. You're playing with the big boys on slashdot, and if you can't even present an argument, you should probably just forfeit the game. Listen, I'll give you an out, don't respond to this post, and we will forget that this discussion ever happened. You got in over your head, that's understandable, let's end this with some dignity, ok?
Re:Crypto is scary stuff
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Ohh, you're one of those people. The paranoid, cynic, LBJ-killed-Kennedy people with more willingness to post on slashdot than knowledge about the subject. There is a name for those kind of people, and infact, it's one of the moderation options on slashdot....
First off, on the you-can't-do-research bit. My point was that there are thousands of scholars working on this very subject every day, yet they never get threatened by any sort of law enforcement? How does that fit with your little paranoid world-view?
And, as for modern ciphers being uncrackable, lets have a little demonstration. You obviously have no clue about the numbers involved, so lets do this slowly. It is common knowledge that DES has been cracked. A couple of years ago someone built a machine that could crak DES in 7 hours, unacceptable in modern terms. Today, a supercomputer could maybe crack it in a half-hour or so, probably even a shorter time than that. Now, let's imagine an impossible machine, the fastest machine ever created in any universe, fictional or real. This machine can crack DES in a femtosecond. How long is a femtosecond, you ask? It's one quintillionth of a second, or 10^-15 seconds, or 0.000000000000001 seconds. That's way to short a time for anything at all to happen, infact, during that time, the speed of light can only travel about 0.0003 millimeters. Infact that number is so small that the human mind can't really picture how small it is, just like the human mind can't understand how big 1 quintillion is. Anyway, let's suppose that this computer can crack DES in that amount of time (meaning it can crack 1 quintillon DES ciphers per second!) Suppose we set that computer onto a modern cipher, namely 256bit AES. How long would it take to crack that?
Let's see: Assuming that AES and DES takes approximatly the same time to execute (which is true, AES is about twice as fast), since for each increase in bit-length, the time to solve it doubles, that means (since DES has a 56 bit cipher) that it would take 2^(256-56)=2^200 femtoseconds. Let's convert that to something we can understand. 2^200/((10^15 femtoseconds in a second)*(3600 seconds in an hour)*(24 hours in a day)*(365 days in a year)) = 2^200/(10^15*3600*24*365) = 50955671114250072156962268275658377807 years (rounded to the nearest integer). Let's stop and think about this for a minute. That mindnumbingly fast computer (one that will probably never be built, a neither classical nor quantum computers will ever be that fast), so fast that to imagine one is a feat impossible to human beings, for it, it would take 50955671114250072156962268275658377807 years to complete!!! You do realise that the age of the universe is only about 13700000000.
However, you probably won't be convinced. Your type never gets convinced. But you know what, it's not just the math that backs me up, every security expert in the world that has any weight agrees with me. So why don't you go back to your little hole, and dream up another cynical consipracy theory. Because kid, when it comes to cryptography, you're out of your element.
PS. You said "LOL"! You actually said "LOL"! On slashdot? Seriously dude, you are one sad individual.
Exactly correct. The name of that algorithm btw is a Ceasar shift or a Ceasar cipher since Ceasar used it (Gaius Julis, that is).
Re:Crypto is scary stuff
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Boy, you don't know that much about cryptography, do you;)
Blasphemy #1: I've heard from a claimed friend of one of the inventors of RSA that it was cracked it years ago. Yet, it continues to get worldwide use. Sure my friend was probably full of it... but who am I suppose to trust here? The government?
That's complete BS. It hasn't been cracked, and it wont be for a long time. Just remember to use big keys and your stuff is safe. As for who you are supposed to trust, you're supposed to trust the huge mathematical community that every day is pounding and pounding and pounding on this problem. They are honest academics, and if there is even a hint of progress it will become public.
Blasphemy #2: One of my close friend's mother had to switch fields from Numerics after she published some papers considered too sensitive. It had something to do with factoring.
I'm not entirely sure what the hell you are saying. Are you saying that your friends mother is a genius mathematician who published a few papers about factoring and was somehow forced to leave the field? That's completely ridiculous, lots of people publish papers on factoring every year. Either you are lying or you have completly misunderstood the matter.
Blasphemy #3: Anybody else notice that quantum computers have been proven to be capable of factoring really well, but no one has shown that they can solve any NP-hard algorithms? Come on... factoring isn't NP hard.
This is a common misconception, that quantum computers will be like a regular computer, "but way faster". This is not so, a quantum computer works in a fundamentally different way, a way that makes it possible to invent algorithms that are way faster than anything on a classical computer. Many of these new algorithms are made for cryptanalysis, namely Shor's algorithm (integer factorization in polynomial time, breaks RSA), the discrete logarithm algorithm (breaks Diffie-Hellman) and Grovers algorithm (would speed up standard brute forcing cracking, but only a quadratic amount which means that you can just double your key length, and it's still as hard).
As for complexity, the decision-problem form of integer factorization ("Is there a factor of M smaller than N?") is indeed in NP, but the specific class is an unresolved problem. Most people doubt that it is in either P or NP-Complete which would most certainly make it NP-hard (unless P=NP ofcourse, but that's a whole 'nother discussion;) Maybe you are thinking of primality testing, which has very recently been proven to be in P. The whole village rejoiced.
Then, there's just some silly stuff I've noticed about crypto. Why do we always seem to use encryption just a generation or so ahead of what is needed to crack it? SHA-1 for example...
Has been a problem in the past, but we've learned our lesson. 256 bit AES will (very possibly) never be cracked by an ordinary computer. A quantum computer might, but it would have to be one bad-ass quantum computer. 256 bit AES is completely safe.
And, why do we encrypt one small block at a time. Each encrypted file usually gives many independent chances to crack the key, and in many cases, some of those blocks have known data.
It doesn't matter one iota whether a block has known data or not. You still need the key to have any idea what is in there or not (that is, imagine you suspect a block of data Y has encrypted X, there is no way you can prove that if you don't have the key). There is something called chosen plaintext attack which you can do a similar thing in public key cryptography, but it is only works in bad implementations of it.
Also, public key is great, but secret key can be easily shown NP-hard to crack (in terms of secret key length) with semi-reasonable assumptions, while public key has no such simple proof. I personally have been trying to prove that no public key system can be NP-hard, but what the heck... I'm not that good. Howe
Ofcourse there is a stylistic choice made when we don't included sources for things like that. If someone comes along and says, "That's BS! And here is why..." we should always be prepared to provide a source. And it is very easy to find sources of statements like that, you can just look it up in, like, the CIA world factbook or something, they probably have it (I haven't checked so I could be wrong, but you get my point). If nothing else, they have a map. There have been indeed a lot of discussion regarding this on the wikipedia mailing list.
Slashdot Mirror
What kind of permissions from the local flight authority does it require? Aren't they hard enough to get to prohibit hobbyist involvement?
So, what, Fedora people are normal?
Don't worry, the modder will be meta-modded to hell
While you are correct, many spammers use botnets, which means they have infiltrated a large number of computers and installed malicious software on them. This arguably makes them hackers (some of them atleast, some can be characterized more as script kiddies). So it's not a huge error.
Also, one might argue that what spammers do is penetrate spam filters, just as other hackers penetrate computer security. It's a shaky argument, but it's not completely invalid. It all depends on how you define a hacker.
As for the RSA being cracked part, it is true that using a short key (1024 bits) might be compromised (just to be clear: it hasn't been cracked yet, it's just that it could be in the forseeable future), but RSA itself is still very secure. Use a 2048-bit key, and you'll be safe for a century, or a 4096-bit key and you'll be safe for a few thousand milleniums.
While it is true that in the early days, the goverenment didn't want these algorithms getting out (they said that giving a lecture on RSA would be punishable as a weapon smuggling offence), there is no report that they hassled the people making them. I mean, for instance, Whitfield Diffie has never said such a thing. And I've never heard anyone else claim it. However, if you say it's a firsthand account, I won't dispute you, you know better in that case.
As for the wikipedia article, if you look two paragraphs up it says: "Many people have tried to find classical polynomial-time algorithms for it and failed, and therefore it is widely suspected to be outside P". ;) While there is by no means consensus in the field, most people feel that it is unlikely to be in P. Also a quick note: there is a difference between NP and NP-Complete. Many people think that they are synonymous, but they aren't. I'm not sure if you're under that impression, but I though that I'd clear that up, just in case :)
The block size isn't really important when it comes to cryptography atleast after a certain point: a 128-bit block cipher is essentially as hard as a 256-bit cipher (actually that's not entirely true, 256-bit is alot harder, just that 128-bit is hard enough for it not to matter anymore). For a 128-bit block size to become an issue, you would have to encrypt around 256 exabytes. Since it is estimated that the sum of human knowledge (that is, information created by humans, audio, video, text, etc.) is about 12 exabytes, it would have to be ALOT of information for it to be compromised ;) However, if you want, Rijndael (ie. AES) comes in a 128, 192 and 256 bit-block sizes. Take your pick.
And no, I don't work for the CIA (I work for the Greatest and Noblest Order of Masons, and we rule the world from behind the scenes!!!! Ahh, crap, now I'll have to kill ya....). I'm just saying, there are free tools which provides absolute security, and are completely open source. We have arrived at a point in history where we can store information and know that it is safe for perpetuity. Modern ciphers are that good.
Appriciate the response. Cheers!
That situation is not very different from the one I am in. I'm going to vote in three elections and on referendum. The elections are for the parliament, the local election and the slightly less local election (somewhat similar to federal/state/local in the states), the referendum is about whether we should have car-tolls in Stockholm. I will get four envelopes, in each I will put in the ballot of the party of my chosing (and a yes or no ballot the case of the referendum), I will hand them to an official who will put them into their respective boxes. Why couldn't you do that over there? There is only a few people that you can vote for, right? Why not have one that says "I vote for Janet Napolitano" and another that says "I vote for [name of Repulican candidate]"? I don't see why that wouldn't work. The state obviously provides all the ballots, readily available at the voting-place. Remember that there are 7 major political parties here, and there are three elections, and we still cope, so the whole "it would be too many ballots" arguemnt doesn't fly with me.
However, I suspect that your point was that this particular system of voting is not ideal in every case. Fair enough, but there are certainly different ways you could adapt it so that it does work, without any ambiguity or difficulty. Everytime I hear someone talking about why we should have electronic voting, they always say "electronic voting does this better" or something like this. Look, we have been voting for stuff since ancient greece! There is no problem with coming up with a good voting system! This has been solved! There is absolutely no good reasons to introduce additional complications by using machines, manual voting works perfectly. Another thing people say is that it would aid people with disabilities. Wouldn't a much better situation be, say, getting a HUMAN to help them??? Arn't people alot more helpful if you are blind than a cold machine?
PS. If I were in your situation, I would probably vote for McCain aswell. I mean, we a agree on very little politically, but what a man he is. An inspiration. The democratic candidate would have to be absolutely stellar for me to vote for them if McCain is the opponent.
No, you're wrong, it's different when it comes to voting.
First off, can you tell me anything that is better with electronic voting vs. manual voting? The only thing I can think of is perhaps faster vote-counting, but that is a very weak argument, considering how fast manual voting (in systems that work) is.
Meanwhile, there are many, many downsides. There is always the possibility of error, like this istance has proven. This is a fact: computers break down. They always have, and they always will. There is no guarantee that they won't. Normally, this is acceptable, a computer that breaks down isn't that big of a deal, This is not the case when it comes to elections. A correct, democratic systems needs complete, 100% reliability. Even a few votes getting lost, even a few people who can't vote because somebody took a tire-iron to the local voting machines is a catastrophy.
Second, there is too big of a chance for fraud. We will have to trust that no one tampers with the machines, that the machines themselves are working, that the correct person is voting, that all machines get registered, etc. This is something that is impossible to completely insure yourself against. However, if you interface with another human that can check it, that makes sure everything is done correctly, then you're fine.
You used the example of the car/buggy. That is a very poor example, because cars provided substantial benefits, this is not true with electronic voting. A better example would perhaps be commercial airplanes. Can a computer fly an airplane? Sure it could, it wouldn't even be too hard to do! It would be cheaper (pilots are very expensive), so why not do it? Because we simply cannot trust computers that much. A Blue Screen of Death would become eerily literal.
Some things humans do very well. Flying airplanes is one. Elections is another. It is idiotic to replace these tasks with computers. Especially since the human way works so well.
These arguments are simply not valid, for one very good reason: The rest of the democratic world does just fine with manual voting. When was the last time you heard that there were problems counting votes in Germany, or France, or the UK, or Norway, or ancient Greece, or whatever.
First off, why you people even need to make an X on a long list of candidates is beyond me. Here in Sweden (where there'll be an election on Sunday) each party has its own ballot, you simply stick that in an envelope, give it to a voting-official which checks your identity and suffrage, that voting offical puts the envelope in a box, and you're done! No confusion over votes, no-one can vote twice, no arguments over which candidates are first on the list (you can get ballots from all the parties in the parliament right there, and there are usually people handing out ballots for the other parties at the voting station). I repeat, for the rest of the world, this is not a problem,
As a plus, if it is desired, this can easily be counted by machine. Since each ballot is unique, you could easily have a machine recognize from what party it comes from. Not that you'd have too, it shouldn't take more than, say, 6-12 hours after the polls have closed to have a result counted by hand. In the last few years, I've never heard of any democratic and free country, that doesn't have wide-spread voter fraud (ie. psuedo-democracies, that deliberatly tamper with elections) messing up an election. Except for America.
I can think of very few things that are more stupid than elecronic voting. The manual system works perfectly, and has done so for a century! Why, ohh, why, mess it up.
Incase you're curious, "ou" is properly called a diphthong. It's a great word, it has all those great consonants making it hard to pronounce, and not many people know what it means, but enough people so that it has not fallen out of usage. The perfect show-off word.
(a diphthong is basically a sound made from two vowels, like "ou" in "about" or "ea" in "fear", if you pronounce "fear" like the brits)
In the UK they actually have another act, specifically to protect the right of governments to use the Because Act. It's the great Watchagonna do 'bout it? Act of 1843. It was enacted because Lord Featherbottom, a member of parliament, had been getting grief from a certain Mr. Parsley who had succesfully used the What defence against the good Lord. The court case was closely monitored in the media at the time, even though it has gone down in history as the most boring trial of all time. Excerpt from transcript:
LORD FEATHERBOTTOM: Because!
MR. PARSLEY: Because what?
LORD FEATHERBOTTOM: Because!
MR. PARSLEY: Because what?
LORD FEATHERBOTTOM: Because!
MR. PARSLEY: Because what?
LORD FEATHERBOTTOM: Because!
MR. PARSLEY: Because what?
And so on and so forth. It was a war of attrition, and on the fourth straight day the elderly lord collapsed, and thus his case was lost. Following that incident, Featherbottom made a rousing speech to the parliament and got his act, well, enacted.
As an interesting historical sidenote, Featherbottom and Parsley eventually became good friends and formed, and were the first presidents of, the London Fine Cheese Society, an organisation famous to this day. Britannia never smelled the same.
XP does ipv6 perfectly, you just have to turn it on (WinKey+R -> "cmd" -> "ipv6 install"). If Vista just "had it", there would be no difference, would there? No, Vista will support ipv6 natively and it will by default be turned on.
Dude, you suck! I've just spent the better half of an hour rifling through my old textbooks looking for a damn identity I could use. I fucking hate sterling numbers, atleast the binomial theorem is easy to memorize (and remember, a few years later now). I will admit defeat if you can produce one, then you'll be the über-l337 math-guy of this discussion.
Yes, that is what I meant, I guess I was in a hurry :P This is the fastest method, is it?
It isn't that hard to do it heuristically, and simply guess what it is, divide, refine guess, divide, refine guess, etc. After three of four iterations, you've probably got it. Not at all an optimal method, but it's easy to remember, it's what I used to do before I physically chained my TI-83+ to my body so that I would never be without it.
You could also try to memorize a few of the terms in the binomial expansion of (1 + x)^.5 and start plugging, but that's alot harder. Hmm, now I'm curious, how do you do it by hand? What is the method?
You guys are wimps:
....
\sum_{k=0}^\infty {1/2 \choose k} }
or, as the common, non-TeX person would write:
1 + 1/2 - 1/8 + 1/16 - 5/128 + 7/256 - 21/1024 + 33/2048 -
Etcetera. Once you go binomial, you never go back.
Exactly. They also might be cautious accidentally altering things on the drive, timestamps for instance are very useful for such investigations. You never do it from inside the system, you always do it from an outside OS.
Yes, I did know that, because as it happends, I am not an idiot. The left party changed their name for a reason, they stopped advocating communist ideas. The fact thay you think someone is communist because they want public schools, hospitals and healthcare shows that you have no idea whatsoever what communism is. Having a large welfare state is not communism. Making sure that everyone can recieve the most basic needs from the government, an education, healthcare from the best healthcare system in the world and for their children to be placed in a safe environment is not communism. I'm personally for such policies, but even if I weren't, I wouldn't be stupid enough to call it communism. No one with even the slightest knowledge of political science would.
Stop saying big words you don't understand. You look foolish doing it.
That's just plain wrong. Neither the Left party nor the Environmental party have communist ideals, and both of them believe in private companies. Just because they believe in higher taxes and a generous welfare state does not make them communist. It's a complete lie, there is not an ounce of truth in what you are saying.
My fellow parent swede is obviously correct, there is no direct correlation to the Rep's and the Dem's of the United States, mostly because the entire swedish political spectrum is shifted very much to the left. However, to clarify for our american friends, there are indeed two political "blocks", the red parties (the lefties) and the blue parties (the righties, that is the colours are reversed compared to in the states). The left consists of the Social Democrats, the Left-party and the Environmental (green) party. The right consists of the Moderates, the Peoples-party (the liberals), the Center party and the Christian Democrats. While there are indeed alot of differences between the parties in the respective blocks, when the it comes down to brass-tax, that's how the parties are going to ally themselves. Either the three-party left coalition wins (in which case the Social Democrats control the executive branch), or the four-party right coalition wins (in which case the Moderats control the executive branch). So while not as clear, there is certainly a two-side dichotomy to swedish politics, just like in american politics.
While I haven't seen any recent polls on them specifically, they will almost certainly have no impact whatsoever. To get a seat in parliament, you need atleast 4% of the popular vote (this is to weed out small, very fringe parties, such as nazis and pirates ;) and in the last election, around 5.3 million people voted. 4% of 5.3 million is 212000 votes. They have no chance in hell of getting that many.
Much more interesting are two other tiny parties, FI (feministic initiative) and a party that's called the June-list. The first one was formed as a response to a percieved lack of feministic issues being discussed in the national theatre (I'm a rabid feminist, it's an extremely important issue for me, but unfortunatly, the leaders if FI are, well, insane). The second one, Juni-listan (the June-list), was a party that was formed at the last swedish referendum (whether we should join the European Monatery Union and start using the Euro) as a rabid anti-EU party. Both are now trying to get into the parliament. It will be interesting to see what happens with them, but the Pirate Party has unfortunatly no chance of getting any seats. I mean, even I, a slashdotter who takes the copyright issue seriously, won't vote for them. I'm sorry, but there is too much at stake in this election.
Look, Mr. Partain, you were kinda funny at first, but know I just feel sorry for you. Maybe you should reexamine why you even visit slashdot, maybe you'd like some other site better, like myspace or youtube. They have neat videos at youtube, I bet you'd like it. You're playing with the big boys on slashdot, and if you can't even present an argument, you should probably just forfeit the game. Listen, I'll give you an out, don't respond to this post, and we will forget that this discussion ever happened. You got in over your head, that's understandable, let's end this with some dignity, ok?
Ohh, you're one of those people. The paranoid, cynic, LBJ-killed-Kennedy people with more willingness to post on slashdot than knowledge about the subject. There is a name for those kind of people, and infact, it's one of the moderation options on slashdot....
First off, on the you-can't-do-research bit. My point was that there are thousands of scholars working on this very subject every day, yet they never get threatened by any sort of law enforcement? How does that fit with your little paranoid world-view?
And, as for modern ciphers being uncrackable, lets have a little demonstration. You obviously have no clue about the numbers involved, so lets do this slowly. It is common knowledge that DES has been cracked. A couple of years ago someone built a machine that could crak DES in 7 hours, unacceptable in modern terms. Today, a supercomputer could maybe crack it in a half-hour or so, probably even a shorter time than that. Now, let's imagine an impossible machine, the fastest machine ever created in any universe, fictional or real. This machine can crack DES in a femtosecond. How long is a femtosecond, you ask? It's one quintillionth of a second, or 10^-15 seconds, or 0.000000000000001 seconds. That's way to short a time for anything at all to happen, infact, during that time, the speed of light can only travel about 0.0003 millimeters. Infact that number is so small that the human mind can't really picture how small it is, just like the human mind can't understand how big 1 quintillion is. Anyway, let's suppose that this computer can crack DES in that amount of time (meaning it can crack 1 quintillon DES ciphers per second!) Suppose we set that computer onto a modern cipher, namely 256bit AES. How long would it take to crack that?
Let's see: Assuming that AES and DES takes approximatly the same time to execute (which is true, AES is about twice as fast), since for each increase in bit-length, the time to solve it doubles, that means (since DES has a 56 bit cipher) that it would take 2^(256-56)=2^200 femtoseconds. Let's convert that to something we can understand. 2^200/((10^15 femtoseconds in a second)*(3600 seconds in an hour)*(24 hours in a day)*(365 days in a year)) = 2^200/(10^15*3600*24*365) = 50955671114250072156962268275658377807 years (rounded to the nearest integer). Let's stop and think about this for a minute. That mindnumbingly fast computer (one that will probably never be built, a neither classical nor quantum computers will ever be that fast), so fast that to imagine one is a feat impossible to human beings, for it, it would take 50955671114250072156962268275658377807 years to complete!!! You do realise that the age of the universe is only about 13700000000.
However, you probably won't be convinced. Your type never gets convinced. But you know what, it's not just the math that backs me up, every security expert in the world that has any weight agrees with me. So why don't you go back to your little hole, and dream up another cynical consipracy theory. Because kid, when it comes to cryptography, you're out of your element.
PS. You said "LOL"! You actually said "LOL"! On slashdot? Seriously dude, you are one sad individual.
Exactly correct. The name of that algorithm btw is a Ceasar shift or a Ceasar cipher since Ceasar used it (Gaius Julis, that is).
Boy, you don't know that much about cryptography, do you ;)
Blasphemy #1: I've heard from a claimed friend of one of the inventors of RSA that it was cracked it years ago. Yet, it continues to get worldwide use. Sure my friend was probably full of it... but who am I suppose to trust here? The government?
That's complete BS. It hasn't been cracked, and it wont be for a long time. Just remember to use big keys and your stuff is safe. As for who you are supposed to trust, you're supposed to trust the huge mathematical community that every day is pounding and pounding and pounding on this problem. They are honest academics, and if there is even a hint of progress it will become public.
Blasphemy #2: One of my close friend's mother had to switch fields from Numerics after she published some papers considered too sensitive. It had something to do with factoring.
I'm not entirely sure what the hell you are saying. Are you saying that your friends mother is a genius mathematician who published a few papers about factoring and was somehow forced to leave the field? That's completely ridiculous, lots of people publish papers on factoring every year. Either you are lying or you have completly misunderstood the matter.
Blasphemy #3: Anybody else notice that quantum computers have been proven to be capable of factoring really well, but no one has shown that they can solve any NP-hard algorithms? Come on... factoring isn't NP hard.
This is a common misconception, that quantum computers will be like a regular computer, "but way faster". This is not so, a quantum computer works in a fundamentally different way, a way that makes it possible to invent algorithms that are way faster than anything on a classical computer. Many of these new algorithms are made for cryptanalysis, namely Shor's algorithm (integer factorization in polynomial time, breaks RSA), the discrete logarithm algorithm (breaks Diffie-Hellman) and Grovers algorithm (would speed up standard brute forcing cracking, but only a quadratic amount which means that you can just double your key length, and it's still as hard).
As for complexity, the decision-problem form of integer factorization ("Is there a factor of M smaller than N?") is indeed in NP, but the specific class is an unresolved problem. Most people doubt that it is in either P or NP-Complete which would most certainly make it NP-hard (unless P=NP ofcourse, but that's a whole 'nother discussion ;) Maybe you are thinking of primality testing, which has very recently been proven to be in P. The whole village rejoiced.
Then, there's just some silly stuff I've noticed about crypto. Why do we always seem to use encryption just a generation or so ahead of what is needed to crack it? SHA-1 for example...
Has been a problem in the past, but we've learned our lesson. 256 bit AES will (very possibly) never be cracked by an ordinary computer. A quantum computer might, but it would have to be one bad-ass quantum computer. 256 bit AES is completely safe.
And, why do we encrypt one small block at a time. Each encrypted file usually gives many independent chances to crack the key, and in many cases, some of those blocks have known data.
It doesn't matter one iota whether a block has known data or not. You still need the key to have any idea what is in there or not (that is, imagine you suspect a block of data Y has encrypted X, there is no way you can prove that if you don't have the key). There is something called chosen plaintext attack which you can do a similar thing in public key cryptography, but it is only works in bad implementations of it.
Also, public key is great, but secret key can be easily shown NP-hard to crack (in terms of secret key length) with semi-reasonable assumptions, while public key has no such simple proof. I personally have been trying to prove that no public key system can be NP-hard, but what the heck... I'm not that good. Howe
Ofcourse there is a stylistic choice made when we don't included sources for things like that. If someone comes along and says, "That's BS! And here is why..." we should always be prepared to provide a source. And it is very easy to find sources of statements like that, you can just look it up in, like, the CIA world factbook or something, they probably have it (I haven't checked so I could be wrong, but you get my point). If nothing else, they have a map. There have been indeed a lot of discussion regarding this on the wikipedia mailing list.