Wouldnt it be better to tell the police that the encrypted data in the last step was actually the key and the new x-ored file was the data. That way they would extract a picture of a cat!.
Regularly email your encrypted password list to friends who would know how to decode it given the password. Then split up the password using Shamir's Secret Sharing Scheme (http://point-at-infinity.org/ssss/) into 10 shares requiring 5 to decode. Send these shares to 10 people you trust. 5 of them need to get together to determine your password.
The truth is that for the last 500 years or so, the "profession" called "astronomers" has attracted what you would call "round earthers" who believe that the earth is round.
Since the late 1640s the Galileo Galilei round earth view has been the fashion with the vast majority of astronomers. Therefore, astronomy has tended to attract people who agree with his theories, ie. the earth is round.
Galileo Galilei's theories are regarded as "gospel" for most astronomers. People who view it as wrong are generally not considered "credible." It's not hard to see how this profession would then attract people with a similar philosophy.
_
Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself. The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool. - Richard Feynman
What you say is true but I believe it is trumped by a more important principle. A democracy can only work properly if the electorate are well (and accurately) informed. In your scenario, you could (and I believe in the US are) end up with a drawn out conflict, with the media painting a rosy picture of how things are going, and continue to elect a government that if the truth were known would lose an election. It may then suit a government to actually prolong a war to stay in power. It turns out that waging war is one thing that democracies actually don't cope very well with.
Don't get too hung up on the definition (maybe i'm too late:-). Its the implications that flow from it that are important. Darwin was able to see direct evidence of adaptation in species to their surroundings. It leads to a pretty compelling theory of how species got to how they are today, without the need for a creator.
In your scenario, there would be confusion as to how an obviously maladapted animal survived, and hopefully that would lead to the discovery that unanticipated intervention was part of the equation.
Since that hasnt happened in the real world I guess thats more evidence that there are no supernatural outside influences.
Isnt there just a hint of paranoia here though?. You see its a bit tricky to use the term "you" to define the whole of the west, as many different opinions exist and are freely expressed here. I doubt you could come up with much evidence that those views you ascribe to us were majority views, but for some reason you picked them out of the myriad available.
One major cultural difference I see between the west and China (and some Islamic states) is that we see differing views as a strength and you see them as some kind of threat to the stability of society (because your governments say so?). We are often accused of being hypocrites because, to someone who is used to only seeing one view expressed in the media, it appears like we cant make our minds up about what we actually want. Democracy is full of compromises and inconsistencies.
If you could be sure that a dictator would always be benevolent, then I think it could be a better system than democracy, but the point is that that will never happen. Eventually someone will come along who is a control freak and thinks that it is necessary to kill a lot of their countrymen to get their (or their interpretation of god's) way.
Much better to have your politicians afraid (because you can peacefully remove them) of what the public wants than vice versa.
Oh and to the people who seem to have a problem with the term "Democracy" as some kind of western imperialist idea, try replacing it with "Asking the people who they want to rule over them" and see if it sounds so bad then.
While I am an agnostic humanist I can see the how some of the memes associated with religions are so virulent. There is an attractive simplicity to the idea that I should behave in a socially beneficial manner just because a potentially vindictive omnipotent being (or his human "representative") tells me to. I am afraid that my best attempts to explain why I as a humanist I want my fellow human beings to be happy and fulfilled all end up getting bogged down in explanations around instincts we devoleped under selective pressures thousands of years ago.
I have come to the sad conclusion that the human brain as a meme reproducing machine doesnt have some kind of magical ability to home in on cosmic "truths", and that some of the ideas we have floating around at the moment may be the best it gets.
On a positive note however truths exist whether we believe in them or not and I see plenty of signs that (mostly) when a meme threatens the survival of its host the meme gets adapted. I suspect when too many people in America for instance start rejecting science and medicine and the standard of living starts to suffer then people will return to more practical belief systems (or die:). Likewise following the tsumani in asia, the "common sense" solution is to build a detection system, which is being done, whereas the religious "explanation" was that it happened because they had strayed from their leaders wishes, which ultimately has no real advantage for their survival.
"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool".(Richard Feynman)
I think it's a disgrace as well, but for different reasons. In a democracy a group of people get together either directly or via representatives to decide what the limits of their freedoms are, and call this the law. They also decide what the punishments will be for breaking those laws. We may not like the laws we are subject to but we at least have the freedom to complain about them and persuade our fellow nationals to change them (or the tarrifs for breaking them). If people travel to foreign territoties, then they do so under the knowledge that they will then be subject to the laws of the countries they are visiting.
The difference with this treaty is it effectively introduces a whole new slew of laws that a British citizen is subject to without their knowledge, and without them having any say about how those laws are drafted, WITHOUT THEM NECESSARILY LEAVING THE COUNTRY.
It is easy to think of situations that could arise that would highlight the absurdity of this treaty. Suppose the US passed a law that made it illegal to insult George Bush punishable by death, and while I was I the phone to a US colleague said something that broke that law. Is it reasonalble I should subject to that law?
The only way this kind of treaty could be fairly expected to work would be if it only applied to laws which were common between territories, and had similar punishments (or similar punishments would be enforced as part of the treaty).
In the UK we now have to make the introduction of this extradition treaty and election issue and make our politicians aware it is not acceptable in its current form.
A push for widespread adoption of multicast could significantly reduce the burden on large sections of the internet's infrastructure. Support for multicast is a requirement for ipv6 so a lot of networking equipment out there will already support it. Apart from the obvious uses for streaming "broadcast" type data, with a little imagination it could be used say for file downloads, where you would join a download being broadcast and a wait until a complete loop throught the file had occured, when the client would join the two sections. With YouTube, poplular videos could also be broadcast (perhaps multiple copies with staggered start times) in an endless loop.
I really don't understand why we don't have a big push to get multicast into widespread use. Networking equipment will have to support it for IPV6 anyway so we probably have a lot of what is needed already in place. Apart from the obvious uses for streaming data I can also see how it could be used for conventional downloads. My low bandwith site would just transmit popular files in a loop and a client on the remote end would stitch the file back into the right order. If poplular files on youtube are viewed many times a second, perhaps ten copies could be in a loop and if you want to stream you just wait until one starts again. This could result in a massive reduction in traffic just where it is needed.
Slashdot Mirror
Wouldnt it be better to tell the police that the encrypted data in the last step was actually the key and the new x-ored file was the data. That way they would extract a picture of a cat!.
Regularly email your encrypted password list to friends who would know how to decode it given the password. Then split up the password using Shamir's Secret Sharing Scheme (http://point-at-infinity.org/ssss/) into 10 shares requiring 5 to decode. Send these shares to 10 people you trust. 5 of them need to get together to determine your password.
The truth is that for the last 500 years or so, the "profession" called "astronomers" has attracted what you would call "round earthers" who believe that the earth is round.
Since the late 1640s the Galileo Galilei round earth view has been the fashion with the vast majority of astronomers. Therefore, astronomy has tended to attract people who agree with his theories, ie. the earth is round.
Galileo Galilei's theories are regarded as "gospel" for most astronomers. People who view it as wrong are generally not considered "credible." It's not hard to see how this profession would then attract people with a similar philosophy.
_
Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself. The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool. - Richard Feynman
What you say is true but I believe it is trumped by a more important principle. A democracy can only work properly if the electorate are well (and accurately) informed. In your scenario, you could (and I believe in the US are) end up with a drawn out conflict, with the media painting a rosy picture of how things are going, and continue to elect a government that if the truth were known would lose an election. It may then suit a government to actually prolong a war to stay in power. It turns out that waging war is one thing that democracies actually don't cope very well with.
It's a profound tautology.
Don't get too hung up on the definition (maybe i'm too late:-). Its the implications that flow from it that are important. Darwin was able to see direct evidence of adaptation in species to their surroundings. It leads to a pretty compelling theory of how species got to how they are today, without the need for a creator.
In your scenario, there would be confusion as to how an obviously maladapted animal survived, and hopefully that would lead to the discovery that unanticipated intervention was part of the equation.
Since that hasnt happened in the real world I guess thats more evidence that there are no supernatural outside influences.
Isnt there just a hint of paranoia here though?. You see its a bit tricky to use the term "you" to define the whole of the west, as many different opinions exist and are freely expressed here. I doubt you could come up with much evidence that those views you ascribe to us were majority views, but for some reason you picked them out of the myriad available.
One major cultural difference I see between the west and China (and some Islamic states) is that we see differing views as a strength and you see them as some kind of threat to the stability of society (because your governments say so?). We are often accused of being hypocrites because, to someone who is used to only seeing one view expressed in the media, it appears like we cant make our minds up about what we actually want. Democracy is full of compromises and inconsistencies.
If you could be sure that a dictator would always be benevolent, then I think it could be a better system than democracy, but the point is that that will never happen. Eventually someone will come along who is a control freak and thinks that it is necessary to kill a lot of their countrymen to get their (or their interpretation of god's) way.
Much better to have your politicians afraid (because you can peacefully remove them) of what the public wants than vice versa.
Oh and to the people who seem to have a problem with the term "Democracy" as some kind of western imperialist idea, try replacing it with "Asking the people who they want to rule over them" and see if it sounds so bad then.
I suppose we will just have to rely on gamers, scientists and the military to drive technology forward.
While I am an agnostic humanist I can see the how some of the memes associated with religions are so virulent. There is an attractive simplicity to the idea that I should behave in a socially beneficial manner just because a potentially vindictive omnipotent being (or his human "representative") tells me to. I am afraid that my best attempts to explain why I as a humanist I want my fellow human beings to be happy and fulfilled all end up getting bogged down in explanations around instincts we devoleped under selective pressures thousands of years ago.
I have come to the sad conclusion that the human brain as a meme reproducing machine doesnt have some kind of magical ability to home in on cosmic "truths", and that some of the ideas we have floating around at the moment may be the best it gets.
On a positive note however truths exist whether we believe in them or not and I see plenty of signs that (mostly) when a meme threatens the survival of its host the meme gets adapted. I suspect when too many people in America for instance start rejecting science and medicine and the standard of living starts to suffer then people will return to more practical belief systems (or die:). Likewise following the tsumani in asia, the "common sense" solution is to build a detection system, which is being done, whereas the religious "explanation" was that it happened because they had strayed from their leaders wishes, which ultimately has no real advantage for their survival.
"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool".(Richard Feynman)
I think it's a disgrace as well, but for different reasons. In a democracy a group of people get together either directly or via representatives to decide what the limits of their freedoms are, and call this the law. They also decide what the punishments will be for breaking those laws. We may not like the laws we are subject to but we at least have the freedom to complain about them and persuade our fellow nationals to change them (or the tarrifs for breaking them). If people travel to foreign territoties, then they do so under the knowledge that they will then be subject to the laws of the countries they are visiting.
The difference with this treaty is it effectively introduces a whole new slew of laws that a British citizen is subject to without their knowledge, and without them having any say about how those laws are drafted, WITHOUT THEM NECESSARILY LEAVING THE COUNTRY.
It is easy to think of situations that could arise that would highlight the absurdity of this treaty. Suppose the US passed a law that made it illegal to insult George Bush punishable by death, and while I was I the phone to a US colleague said something that broke that law. Is it reasonalble I should subject to that law?
The only way this kind of treaty could be fairly expected to work would be if it only applied to laws which were common between territories, and had similar punishments (or similar punishments would be enforced as part of the treaty).
In the UK we now have to make the introduction of this extradition treaty and election issue and make our politicians aware it is not acceptable in its current form.
A push for widespread adoption of multicast could significantly reduce the burden on large sections of the internet's infrastructure. Support for multicast is a requirement for ipv6 so a lot of networking equipment out there will already support it. Apart from the obvious uses for streaming "broadcast" type data, with a little imagination it could be used say for file downloads, where you would join a download being broadcast and a wait until a complete loop throught the file had occured, when the client would join the two sections. With YouTube, poplular videos could also be broadcast (perhaps multiple copies with staggered start times) in an endless loop.
I really don't understand why we don't have a big push to get multicast into widespread use. Networking equipment will have to support it for IPV6 anyway so we probably have a lot of what is needed already in place. Apart from the obvious uses for streaming data I can also see how it could be used for conventional downloads. My low bandwith site would just transmit popular files in a loop and a client on the remote end would stitch the file back into the right order. If poplular files on youtube are viewed many times a second, perhaps ten copies could be in a loop and if you want to stream you just wait until one starts again. This could result in a massive reduction in traffic just where it is needed.