Actually, the Federal government has every right to regulate its own agencies, which is all the time-keeping regulations do. They have no authority to tell you how to set your own clocks, nor do they even have any such laws. You have CHOSEN to use the same time convention, for reasons of convenience. Go ahead, set your clocks to whatever time you want, hell you can even invent your own clocks. I guarantee you they will not levy any fines, charge you with any crimes, nor make any other attempt to coerce you into adopting their system of keeping time.
It would take about 2.1 billion seconds (about 64 years) using all of the available computing power on the Earth, starting from this moment forward, assuming that the available processing power doubles every 18 months, and every computer were singularly dedicated to the task for the entire period, to crack AES-128 (yes, the 128-bit version) using the techniques described in this article.
Assumptions:
2^58 = total computer power in the world (the most powerful supercomputer can perform 2^53 operations per second, the whole TOP500 combined can perform 2^56) 2^126 = average number of operations to crack AES-128
While I think Wikipedia has strayed greatly from its original goals and principles, I thought one of the most important ones was maintaining a "neutral" point-of-view in articles. How is marking certain images as "offensive" showing neutrality? If an image is illustrative to the content of an article and it is legal to be used, then whether or not some people find it offensive ought to have no bearing on its inclusion. I think that the inevitable debates over whether or not an image is offensive will serve no constructive encyclopedic purpose. I am certain that there are already similar debates about the inclusion of "offensive" images to begin with, but in these cases there is a fairly objective standard (usefulness, relevance, legality) rather than a fairly subjective one (offensiveness). It may seem like a mostly moot point if the system is opt-in, but it is a very short leap from opt-in to opt-out once the mechanism is in place. If an image helps to illustrate an article, regardless of its political, religious, or moral insensitivity, then it should be shown; to hide it is to impose a point-of-view.
The one-time pad is, from an information theoretic perspective, perfectly secure. Essentially, you take a randomly generated key of the same length as your message and perform some operation between the two (it needn't be any more complicated than a bitwise XOR) that completely obscures the message and the key. Provided that you never use the same key twice, there is no way for someone else, knowing only the ciphertext, to obtain either the message or the key, apart from brute force. If the message is sufficiently long, then so is the key, and then even brute force is infeasible.
Obviously, this method is not practical for general use, but it is useful where there is an accessible and secure side channel (secure wire, military courier, etc.) through which to distribute the one-time key. It is vulnerable to side-channel attacks, but only complete ones. Knowing part of the key will only allow you to decrypt the equivalent part of the message; assuming the key was truly random, there is no way to derive the remaining parts.
All of which is, more or less, interchangeable. The Intel x86/IBM PC platform, despite its many flaws, has reached a stable point where there are well accepted and commonly implemented standards for the boot process, the storage formats, the hardware interfaces, etc. ARM, despite a "purer" and "simpler" instruction architecture, lacks much of this common surrounding infrastructure.
And we all know it's never failed to catch a bug. But if you can write perfect bug reporting software, why not write a perfect program in the first place?
You don't need to pay the whole budget, just the deficit ($1.5 trillion). Massive increases in marginal tax rates would indeed accomplish this. The problem is not that it's infeasible, the problem is that it's untenable. If you set marginal rates to 90%, yes you could pay the deficit for one year, but you'd be lucky if anyone stayed around long enough to pay it the next year.
You imply laziness where others see frustration. I edited Wikipedia for a long time, and granted not all of my edits were good, but then I watched as my contributions, one-by-one, regardless of quality, got deleted. This took years, mind you, but it left me with the distinct impression that either I had nothing of value to add to Wikipedia, or Wikipedia had nothing of value for me. Perhaps both.
I would go back in a heartbeat if WP worked like it did in 2004 again. But it doesn't, and I don't think that's going to change any time soon, so my edits nowadays are minor, few, and far between.
Not to mention certain forms: http://www.opm.gov/forms/pdf_fill/sf86.pdf (even includes expunged/stricken records!) Also, any rental, mortgage, or employment application.
The SSN was never intended as a means of identification initially, but:
1. When a system of identification was needed, the SSN system was already in place; 2. In theory, SSNs have a 1:1 person-to-number correspondence, unlike other forms of identification (name, birthplace, birthdate, etc.); 3. Without such a system, the government would perform much more invasive checks for things like employment, voting, and banking.
So either you accept that the government shouldn't be doing such things (so "illegal" immigrants can work, dead people can vote, and terrorists can open bank accounts, e.g.) or you recognize that SSNs are the lesser of two evils.
That doesn't mean there couldn't be a better system, but such a system would invariably require the government to keep even more information about its citizens.
Two comments about my own comment: 1. I read the parent as being a computer repair tech originally, but I'm not so sure on second reading. 2. Newegg apparently doesn't ship outside the U.S., but Amazon does (prices are a little higher though).
An inverted parabola is a (complex) square root. I think you mean a concave parabola, but honestly any strictly concave function would match your definition.
I must disagree with your assessment of, and desires for, the public school system.
First of all, while sex and drugs are prevalent in the schools, they have been so for at least 40 years, so that particular aspect is hardly new.
Second of all, I can say, as a product of the public school system (class of 2006), that while those pressures exist, resistance to them is not impossible, and there are plenty of students who abstain. To forsake the entire system because of a wider societal trend (the sex and drugs didn't start in the schools, after all) is both foolish (why would we pay for such a thing?) and dangerous (by forcing all the abstainers out, and leaving only the bad influences behind).
I agree that vouchers would be a significant step forward, both by providing equality of opportunity to all, and by introducing genuine competition into a stagnant market. However, the problems of the public schools will not be solved by vouchers alone, and the issues of self-righteous parents and counter-productive teachers unions will remain.
That sounds fine on paper, but how's that working out in practice? Public school teachers are nearly 100% unionized, and yet being a new teacher is still among the lowest paid professions in the country, even more so for a profession that requires a college degree (at least in my state).
You can call the parents whatever you want, but that doesn't mitigate their effect on both their child's education and the educational system as a whole. The fear of self-righteous parents was the single biggest factor discouraging me from the profession of teaching (starting pay being the second biggest factor).
Slashdot Mirror
I freely accept the idiot designation upon myself, unless of course Rick Astley is somehow supporting OP's position.
Actually, the Federal government has every right to regulate its own agencies, which is all the time-keeping regulations do. They have no authority to tell you how to set your own clocks, nor do they even have any such laws. You have CHOSEN to use the same time convention, for reasons of convenience. Go ahead, set your clocks to whatever time you want, hell you can even invent your own clocks. I guarantee you they will not levy any fines, charge you with any crimes, nor make any other attempt to coerce you into adopting their system of keeping time.
Don't be an idiot.
I didn't know Seattle was in Canada.
Correct link: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=solve+integral+of+2^58*2^%281.97e-08*t%29+from+0+to+x+equal+to+2^126
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=solve+integral+of+2^58*2^%281.97e-08*t%29+from+0+to+x+equal+to+2^126
It would take about 2.1 billion seconds (about 64 years) using all of the available computing power on the Earth, starting from this moment forward, assuming that the available processing power doubles every 18 months, and every computer were singularly dedicated to the task for the entire period, to crack AES-128 (yes, the 128-bit version) using the techniques described in this article.
Assumptions:
2^58 = total computer power in the world (the most powerful supercomputer can perform 2^53 operations per second, the whole TOP500 combined can perform 2^56)
2^126 = average number of operations to crack AES-128
While I think Wikipedia has strayed greatly from its original goals and principles, I thought one of the most important ones was maintaining a "neutral" point-of-view in articles. How is marking certain images as "offensive" showing neutrality? If an image is illustrative to the content of an article and it is legal to be used, then whether or not some people find it offensive ought to have no bearing on its inclusion. I think that the inevitable debates over whether or not an image is offensive will serve no constructive encyclopedic purpose. I am certain that there are already similar debates about the inclusion of "offensive" images to begin with, but in these cases there is a fairly objective standard (usefulness, relevance, legality) rather than a fairly subjective one (offensiveness). It may seem like a mostly moot point if the system is opt-in, but it is a very short leap from opt-in to opt-out once the mechanism is in place. If an image helps to illustrate an article, regardless of its political, religious, or moral insensitivity, then it should be shown; to hide it is to impose a point-of-view.
The one-time pad is, from an information theoretic perspective, perfectly secure. Essentially, you take a randomly generated key of the same length as your message and perform some operation between the two (it needn't be any more complicated than a bitwise XOR) that completely obscures the message and the key. Provided that you never use the same key twice, there is no way for someone else, knowing only the ciphertext, to obtain either the message or the key, apart from brute force. If the message is sufficiently long, then so is the key, and then even brute force is infeasible.
Obviously, this method is not practical for general use, but it is useful where there is an accessible and secure side channel (secure wire, military courier, etc.) through which to distribute the one-time key. It is vulnerable to side-channel attacks, but only complete ones. Knowing part of the key will only allow you to decrypt the equivalent part of the message; assuming the key was truly random, there is no way to derive the remaining parts.
All of which is, more or less, interchangeable. The Intel x86/IBM PC platform, despite its many flaws, has reached a stable point where there are well accepted and commonly implemented standards for the boot process, the storage formats, the hardware interfaces, etc. ARM, despite a "purer" and "simpler" instruction architecture, lacks much of this common surrounding infrastructure.
They would have had to invent SATA first...
And we all know it's never failed to catch a bug. But if you can write perfect bug reporting software, why not write a perfect program in the first place?
How do we start cars anyway? A 2-liter gasoline engine doesn't just start itself.
You don't need to pay the whole budget, just the deficit ($1.5 trillion). Massive increases in marginal tax rates would indeed accomplish this. The problem is not that it's infeasible, the problem is that it's untenable. If you set marginal rates to 90%, yes you could pay the deficit for one year, but you'd be lucky if anyone stayed around long enough to pay it the next year.
You imply laziness where others see frustration. I edited Wikipedia for a long time, and granted not all of my edits were good, but then I watched as my contributions, one-by-one, regardless of quality, got deleted. This took years, mind you, but it left me with the distinct impression that either I had nothing of value to add to Wikipedia, or Wikipedia had nothing of value for me. Perhaps both.
I would go back in a heartbeat if WP worked like it did in 2004 again. But it doesn't, and I don't think that's going to change any time soon, so my edits nowadays are minor, few, and far between.
A path can consist of a single edge, and both endpoints of an edge can be the same vertex.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asset_forfeiture
Not to mention certain forms: http://www.opm.gov/forms/pdf_fill/sf86.pdf (even includes expunged/stricken records!)
Also, any rental, mortgage, or employment application.
Sweden could be different.
http://www.senate.mo.gov/11info/pdf-jrnl/DAY48.pdf#page=8
Sorry about that, same result though.
"NAYS—Senators—None" (http://www.senate.mo.gov/11info/pdf-jrnl/DAY68.pdf#page=31)
I guess all the Republicans in Missouri are really Democrats.
The SSN was never intended as a means of identification initially, but:
1. When a system of identification was needed, the SSN system was already in place;
2. In theory, SSNs have a 1:1 person-to-number correspondence, unlike other forms of identification (name, birthplace, birthdate, etc.);
3. Without such a system, the government would perform much more invasive checks for things like employment, voting, and banking.
So either you accept that the government shouldn't be doing such things (so "illegal" immigrants can work, dead people can vote, and terrorists can open bank accounts, e.g.) or you recognize that SSNs are the lesser of two evils.
That doesn't mean there couldn't be a better system, but such a system would invariably require the government to keep even more information about its citizens.
Two comments about my own comment:
1. I read the parent as being a computer repair tech originally, but I'm not so sure on second reading.
2. Newegg apparently doesn't ship outside the U.S., but Amazon does (prices are a little higher though).
512MB DDR memory: $16
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820236106
512MB DDR2 memory: $12
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148239
So around $40 or €26 (incl. shipping) for 1GB memory. Is that really so difficult?
If you are infected with a root-kit, and are now spreading disease to my modern OS, your apathy is part of the problem.
If your computer's getting infected with malware, then that's your fault, not other people's. Or does your reasoning only apply in one direction?
100 mi @ 10 mpg = 10 gal
100 mi @ 20 mpg = 5 gal (saves 5 gal)
100 mi @ 40 mpg = 2.5 gal (saves 2.5 gal)
To illustrate the point.
An inverted parabola is a (complex) square root. I think you mean a concave parabola, but honestly any strictly concave function would match your definition.
I must disagree with your assessment of, and desires for, the public school system.
First of all, while sex and drugs are prevalent in the schools, they have been so for at least 40 years, so that particular aspect is hardly new.
Second of all, I can say, as a product of the public school system (class of 2006), that while those pressures exist, resistance to them is not impossible, and there are plenty of students who abstain. To forsake the entire system because of a wider societal trend (the sex and drugs didn't start in the schools, after all) is both foolish (why would we pay for such a thing?) and dangerous (by forcing all the abstainers out, and leaving only the bad influences behind).
I agree that vouchers would be a significant step forward, both by providing equality of opportunity to all, and by introducing genuine competition into a stagnant market. However, the problems of the public schools will not be solved by vouchers alone, and the issues of self-righteous parents and counter-productive teachers unions will remain.
That sounds fine on paper, but how's that working out in practice? Public school teachers are nearly 100% unionized, and yet being a new teacher is still among the lowest paid professions in the country, even more so for a profession that requires a college degree (at least in my state).
You can call the parents whatever you want, but that doesn't mitigate their effect on both their child's education and the educational system as a whole. The fear of self-righteous parents was the single biggest factor discouraging me from the profession of teaching (starting pay being the second biggest factor).