If this is really just about malnourished people in Asia, why don't they eat the same brown, unpolished/hulled rice that their ancestors ate for millenia? I don't know of beta-caratene is one of the nutrients stripped by the process, but even if it isn't their are many others (notably b-complex vitamins which would benefit any malnourished individual)
Of course this won't substitute for a lack of greens & fruit, but as other posters have noted, the problem is distribution & economics, not biological or technological.
How will the poor & starving aford GM rice if they cannot afford natural whole grain rice?
funny thing is that the web now has interfaces for NNTP browsing that are in most cases more friendly than most USEnet programs (Deja News emails me my
headliners from rec.music.gdead, I don't see 'tin' doing that).
I can search a MASSIVE amount of newsgroups fast w/Deja (and probably google).
Very true, but how much would you pay to have NNTP delivered to you over the web?
The only reason deja can do it for nothing is because of a flood of venture capital and the odd ad. How many of these free web services will exist in a few years if they don't start making money some how? (disclaimer: I have no idea if deja is making money or not off it's dejanews banner ads and whatever else they do)
I agree that the infrastructure for http/html is so prevelent that developing applications that use the net in some other way will face a barrier of sorts. However, I think it's silly to expect that every possible application of the networking of the world can be done well using http & html. To wit:
Napster
icq
Neither of thse programs use the web and lots of newbies learned how to use it pretty quick.
I think the bigger hurdle in getting joe sixpacks to use usenet is convincing them that they might actually want to have long winding conversations/flame wars/debates, stretching over days, weeks & months. I think the answer you'd get from most people, having explained the concept, would be, "What's the point? Why wouldn't I just msg my friends on icq/aim/whatever.."
In addition, to get the most of usenet/fido forums/etc, you have to give *and* take. If no one contributes to the group faq or otherwise engenders a sense of structure, the group dies or falls into chaos. Web based services (i.e. Slashdot) don't have this problem because they can't exist without a central individual/corp serving it up, and that is what provides the focus & structure. I don't know many people outside of the pre-1994 internet/bbs community who would consider maintaining a faq to be a productive use of their time, compared to say, volunteering for the united way or some such.
Who knows - maybe they're right.
As an addendum, the great thing about usenet vs. most web discussion forums (i.e. not usenet via http) is that there is no rush to post in the former. i.e. if I start thinking of something to say, I can spend a few days working on it before posting. In slashdot-land, a few days is death, no one will ever read it and even a few hours is crucial. It makes me rush my posts and that's unfortunate.
BUT... I would really still like a hard copy of each vote, right after each vote. God forbid that we wind up
with an election such as the one in Florida, with nothing but bits vanished from the ether as a record of
people's votes.
Is there any way to do this securely w/o a physical record of the vote?
None are perfect though, something we should remember before we go installing MicroSoft Vote v2.04 everywhere and end up with more problems than we started with.
The most interesting variant is "Voting without a Central Tabulating Facility" where each voter does some cryptographic gymnastics on their vote, and passes the result around so everything is counted in the open, no secret counting agency necessary. No one can tell who voted for who, it will tell you if someone tries to vote twice, or if you try to change someone else's vote. Incredible!
In another example, each voter encrypts their vote with a random serial number such that when the vote is over, each voters # is published and individual voters can confirm who they voted for, but who anybody else did, and the Central Counting Agency cannot identify voters from their vote.
Again, the protocols are not perfect, but they're an excellent starting point if you're interested in secure voting.
Funny, I was just reading the Gnu Manifesto for the first time in many years and I came across a wonderful description of free market competition as a race where the winner is rewarded for the best product, fastest time etc. and this is a benefit to society. The only problem being that if allowed, the participants may forget about the whole point of the race and discover other winning strategies, such as punching other players which serve their goals (winning) but not society's (faster runners/processors etc)
I think this sort of development quite similar and I'm not sure I see where society benefits from Intel patenting simple instructions.
I know all the standard arguments i.e.: by locking down everything that can be considered IP they can make more money and thus make better products for society. But the experience of the last 20 years or so would seem to show that one company cannot provide all that our society/ecomony/community needs, even though they are quite capable of *controlling* all those. Our needs require a competition *and* co-operation i.e. standards & interoperability.
I would like to end on a positive note and urge all the americans reading here to use whatever means you can to force a re-evaluation of intellectual property's place in your very important economy. I know a lot of people think their vote doesn't matter, or that a vote for third party candidates is somehow wasted - I believe very strongly that this is not the case. The vote is your only guaranteed input into the running of your state - use it! And if you don't like the choices, start working now for better ones in election years to come!
... A Canadian who is happy to have a number of interesting electoral possibilities worthy of my support who actually get mentioned once or twice in the mainstream press.:)
... is now secure. If Intel uses IP to try to prevent cloning of IA-64, the cloners will have that much more incentive to squeeze more and more out of x86.
Economically, they must - the patents won't be licensed, so there is no other alternative but bankruptcy. I predicut x86's lifetime will be lengthened significantly by this development.
Anyone want to start the FISF (Free Instruction Set Foundation)?
Eli Biham and Adi Shamir (the S in RSA) discovered differential cryptanalysis in 1990. Differential cryptanalysis made short work of many algorithms of the day *except* DES. It was found that any other s-box configuration, including totally random ones, made the whole algorithm fall quickly to this new method. Subsequently, an IBM researcher admitted that they knew about differential cryptanalysis in the early seventies but the NSA convinced them that discussing the method or the s-box criteria would harm US interests.
Actually, the name comes from a type of cryptographic protocol. the zero-knowledge proof. Roughly speaking, a way to prove you have a piece of information, without revealing any of that information.
I have no idea if any part of Zero Knowledge Inc.'s sytems use zero knowledge proofs or whether they just chose it for its cool name and vague relevancy.
If we are to ever become
independent of petrified dino-crap and raise our standards of living above 19th and 20th century technology, we must follow and
expand out knowledge.
It is truly a shame that nuclear power is regarded as some kind of frankenstein monster. Though for the record, I would rather have 19th century (or earlier) living standards and be content than to live in a world poisoned by a few nuclear mistakes.
That said, the only way we will ever make nuclear power safer, and I haven't seen any proof given as to why it can't be, is to use it, experiment with it, research it etc etc. Imagine if the VC money & vertile minds that have been busily making ghz chips & fps games had been working on nuclear
power - on second thought don't imagine that...
"You new laptop uses a Uranium VII 235 ghz processor and in an emergency personal defence situation the entire cpu can be launched on a rail at near light speeds to pick off blue campers. A supply of spare cpu's are included but keep in mind the 1 second reload time.."
But seriously, our fear of nuclear power hinders our ability to learn about it. If we can't learn about it, we can't make any improvements. I wasn't around in the 50's but from what I've heard nuclear power was pretty exciting and our knowledge of harnessing fission expanded by leaps and bounds - can we say the same today?
Note that when I mention safety, I mean it in a fairly wholistic sense, from workers killed, to the chance of catastrophic accidents to disposal of waste. I don't personally think that workers killed per kilowatt-hour should be the dominant measure of on energy source's safety.
have no natural conscience? Wake up, people! That mountain is there for a reason; if you want to go around it, go around it, and if
you want to go across it go across it, but fa crissakes don't *blow* the durn thing up!
Hear Hear!
TANSTAAFL
Everything has it's cost.
Hydroelectric power, solar power, wind power, tidal power etc etc are all oft-cited sources of "clean", "renewable" energy. But the energy isn't free - it must come from somewhere. And if it is "free" then the natural processes that the energy would have powered must be considered "useless" All we are doing is diverting the energy to our own purposes, but we are much too young to know the long term effects.
If you keep damming rivers, you are taking away energy from the river. What would that energy have been used for otherwise? I can only think of:
erosion
carrying away sediment
Instead we ultimately use most of it to create heat, from the line losses in power lines to the 1ghz cpus on our desks. The only eroding we do is in mechanical parts that wear out & break and on the concrete of our roads.
Ditto for all the rest - by creating electricity from tidal flows, we reduce tidal flows, by using wind to power propellers in wind farms, we reduce the power of the wind.
What kinds of long term effects would large scale diversions of such energy be? I can only speculate, but how about:
Reduced erosion of natural features of the planet.
Reduced sediment (and mineral?) deposits in the ocean from river outflows.
Change in ocean salinity or ph from above?
I know that right now our effect on the planet in this manner of energy diversion is probably slight and of little interest, but perhaps one day this will no longer be true and we will have to be careful about what kinds of energy we use.
How much energy does the sun dump on us each day?
What portion of that can we safely use for line loss & playing quake before we have to start considering the effects?
How much energy do we reflect back into space?
What kind of equilibrium exists between energy we reflect and absorb?
How does our release of potential energy in forms from fossil fuels to the atom affect this equilibrium?
Maybe global warming has nothing to do with polution but simply is a result of our dumping heat into the air? (ok - we probably don't create anywhere near enough heat to affect the atmosphere as a whole too much - but one day we probably will)
These are all questions I've been thinking about lately - anyone else?
The page is 125K long and seems to be a query run against their support database. There are about 12 differently worded verions of, "Will cuecat work with a mac?", all answered seperately". Ditto for Q's about the red light being on all the time, the safety of the red light, etc etc.
I just submitted a question about using it with Linux - let's see if it shows up:)
Corperation's first responsibility is to thier sock holders. It is all well and good that they can be on the right side here but it is thier job to make money. Not to
uphold the rights of computer users.
I would like to become a Creative sock holder.
Where can they be purchased and what sizes are available? Do I have to just hold the socks, or am I allowed to wear them too?
Sorry no link but... I once read about a bug with the Nokia 6190 where if you shorted a couple of pins on the bottom of the phone, the display would go blank untl you turned it off or reset it.
Anyways, the implication of this was that you could set it on silent, no vibrate, auto-answer, nuke the display and then leave it somewhere close to sensitive discussions. Just call your phone and listen away.
If this is really happening, I'm really sorry for your friend and all the other people in the world who derive their income from obselete froms of information distribution.
The world is changing. It is obvious that many people would rather get their porn/music/movies/whatever over the net than in physical form, many would argue that this is a long term trend. Of course there are IP issues to sort out in this new environment and they will get sorted out, one way or another, and we will move on.
Your basis for supporting the MPAA is about as solid as the tobacco companies crying, "but what about our employees?" as if keeping a few thousand people employed in a stangant industry was appropriate compensation for massive health care bills.
Disclaimer: I don't care what the tobacco companies do, but I don't want to pay for some one's self-inflicted degenerative disease.
Disclaimer: I hate all forms of IP and think the world would be a better place with no IP or significantly less. Given the mass of capital invested in IP these days I think it's unlikely I'll see its abolishment in my time, but I feel it's important to fight when IP rights are being extended & entrenched.
Programmers have to program more carefully *because* the Mac OS has no real memory management to speak of. That's like saying 'Cars should be built with no safety features, so that drivers will HAVE to be more careful.
Sounds logical to me. (the car bit, not the OS bit)
If it meant I had to fear just a little less for my life when I try to cross a 6 lane "neighborhood" street full of adrenline pumped drivers strapped safely into their airbag equipped and side impact rated SUV's - I'd be all for it.
By the way, somewhat off-topic: can anyone tell me why, in an OTP scheme, you can't use your pad once for data, and then once for transmitting a new pad? I'm no crypto expert, and I'm sure there's a problem with that, but I can't figure out what it is.
For a one time pad to be secure, each key bit must be used once and only once, for whatever purpose. You could transmit a new key pad with an existing key pad, but you would use up one key bit for every one that you would receive, so you'd be better off not bothering.
Why is this so? Because a true OTP, properly implemented, is unbreakable. If you want to use a key pad twice, once for data, once for new keys, go ahead, but it's not an OTP any more and it's not unbreakable. i.e. you send an encrypted message and then reuse the same key bits to get more keys. I have some good guesses about the text of your message, so that means I can have some good guesses about the key bits which were re-used. Thus I can determine the new key bits which are being transmitted. Is is this likely? No. But it is, implemented like this, no longer unbreakable. That's why otp's are special, because, implemented properly, they are unbreakable.
So, you're saying that Napster would've gotten all this media attention and accompanying venture capital with only 0.56% of it's current user base? Face the (pirated) music. Napster is only making money due to the large pirated user base and has no financial interest in stopping it.
I've seen references to this a few times now, and I can't let it go any longer. Is Napster really making money? How? In fact, how on earth do they plan to? Keep in mind that having lots of drooling VC's throwing money at you is not, by definition, making money.
IANAVC, but my impression from the article is that this is not, "how things are done", but more of a warning of what can happen if they are done that way. If you recall from the article, the other partners were very concerned about completing due diligence before investing. That they changed their minds, of course, means they weren't concerned enough.
The story painted the other partners as much more mature and more analytical, but they got sold, and they got burned. Don't get sold, don't get burned.
Oh, and when companies do due diligence it's usaully accompanied by a hoarde of lawyers to make sure no one feels any incentive to take the information/business plan/whatever & go start something new up.
Accepting Failure, Moving on, and Financing Crypto
on
Saga Of TriStrata
·
· Score: 1
I think you're right about the stock challenge theory, but you may have been mislead by the first part or two of the article focussing on the choice the VC had to make.
Yes, there was an element of, "this man can't live with himself because the company he didn't invest in made millions", but it's not the main story.
The story is about some interesting personalities in venture capital and in cryptography. It's much more focused on venture capital though, especially how you know when your investment is lost and it's time to leave and move on. A difficult decision we have all had to make in different areas of our lives.
I thought it was interesting because I used to be an avid lurker in sci.crypt.* and I heard about this when it happened. But I heard the technical, scientific side of it. i.e. why a psuedo-OTP is not any kind of OTP at all. I did not get to see the financial/investment side of it, meet any of the players involved.
The bit about the man being upset at his wrong choice was really a throwaway at the end of a really good story.
Slashdot Mirror
Of course this won't substitute for a lack of greens & fruit, but as other posters have noted, the problem is distribution & economics, not biological or technological.
How will the poor & starving aford GM rice if they cannot afford natural whole grain rice?
I can search a MASSIVE amount of newsgroups fast w/Deja (and probably google).
Very true, but how much would you pay to have NNTP delivered to you over the web?
The only reason deja can do it for nothing is because of a flood of venture capital and the odd ad. How many of these free web services will exist in a few years if they don't start making money some how? (disclaimer: I have no idea if deja is making money or not off it's dejanews banner ads and whatever else they do)
I agree that the infrastructure for http/html is so prevelent that developing applications that use the net in some other way will face a barrier of sorts. However, I think it's silly to expect that every possible application of the networking of the world can be done well using http & html. To wit:
- Napster
- icq
Neither of thse programs use the web and lots of newbies learned how to use it pretty quick.I think the bigger hurdle in getting joe sixpacks to use usenet is convincing them that they might actually want to have long winding conversations/flame wars/debates, stretching over days, weeks & months. I think the answer you'd get from most people, having explained the concept, would be, "What's the point? Why wouldn't I just msg my friends on icq/aim/whatever.."
In addition, to get the most of usenet/fido forums/etc, you have to give *and* take. If no one contributes to the group faq or otherwise engenders a sense of structure, the group dies or falls into chaos. Web based services (i.e. Slashdot) don't have this problem because they can't exist without a central individual/corp serving it up, and that is what provides the focus & structure. I don't know many people outside of the pre-1994 internet/bbs community who would consider maintaining a faq to be a productive use of their time, compared to say, volunteering for the united way or some such.
Who knows - maybe they're right.
As an addendum, the great thing about usenet vs. most web discussion forums (i.e. not usenet via http) is that there is no rush to post in the former. i.e. if I start thinking of something to say, I can spend a few days working on it before posting. In slashdot-land, a few days is death, no one will ever read it and even a few hours is crucial. It makes me rush my posts and that's unfortunate.
Is there any way to do this securely w/o a physical record of the vote?
Yes.
In Applied Cryptography, Bruce Schnieir describes several possible protocols for secure elections.
None are perfect though, something we should remember before we go installing MicroSoft Vote v2.04 everywhere and end up with more problems than we started with.
The most interesting variant is "Voting without a Central Tabulating Facility" where each voter does some cryptographic gymnastics on their vote, and passes the result around so everything is counted in the open, no secret counting agency necessary. No one can tell who voted for who, it will tell you if someone tries to vote twice, or if you try to change someone else's vote. Incredible!
In another example, each voter encrypts their vote with a random serial number such that when the vote is over, each voters # is published and individual voters can confirm who they voted for, but who anybody else did, and the Central Counting Agency cannot identify voters from their vote.
Again, the protocols are not perfect, but they're an excellent starting point if you're interested in secure voting.
They just got bought by Golden Soil.
And here's a press release or two from no less an authority than yahoo re: "embedded security devices" and transmeta.
I think this sort of development quite similar and I'm not sure I see where society benefits from Intel patenting simple instructions.
I know all the standard arguments i.e.: by locking down everything that can be considered IP they can make more money and thus make better products for society. But the experience of the last 20 years or so would seem to show that one company cannot provide all that our society/ecomony/community needs, even though they are quite capable of *controlling* all those. Our needs require a competition *and* co-operation i.e. standards & interoperability.
I would like to end on a positive note and urge all the americans reading here to use whatever means you can to force a re-evaluation of intellectual property's place in your very important economy. I know a lot of people think their vote doesn't matter, or that a vote for third party candidates is somehow wasted - I believe very strongly that this is not the case. The vote is your only guaranteed input into the running of your state - use it! And if you don't like the choices, start working now for better ones in election years to come!
Economically, they must - the patents won't be licensed, so there is no other alternative but bankruptcy. I predicut x86's lifetime will be lengthened significantly by this development.
Anyone want to start the FISF (Free Instruction Set Foundation)?
Eli Biham and Adi Shamir (the S in RSA) discovered differential cryptanalysis in 1990. Differential cryptanalysis made short work of many algorithms of the day *except* DES. It was found that any other s-box configuration, including totally random ones, made the whole algorithm fall quickly to this new method. Subsequently, an IBM researcher admitted that they knew about differential cryptanalysis in the early seventies but the NSA convinced them that discussing the method or the s-box criteria would harm US interests.
You can find out more here: .hu t.fi/Opinnot/Tik-110.501/1995/zeroknowledge.html
http://www.tml
I have no idea if any part of Zero Knowledge Inc.'s sytems use zero knowledge proofs or whether they just chose it for its cool name and vague relevancy.
It is truly a shame that nuclear power is regarded as some kind of frankenstein monster. Though for the record, I would rather have 19th century (or earlier) living standards and be content than to live in a world poisoned by a few nuclear mistakes.
That said, the only way we will ever make nuclear power safer, and I haven't seen any proof given as to why it can't be, is to use it, experiment with it, research it etc etc. Imagine if the VC money & vertile minds that have been busily making ghz chips & fps games had been working on nuclear power - on second thought don't imagine that...
"You new laptop uses a Uranium VII 235 ghz processor and in an emergency personal defence situation the entire cpu can be launched on a rail at near light speeds to pick off blue campers. A supply of spare cpu's are included but keep in mind the 1 second reload time.."
But seriously, our fear of nuclear power hinders our ability to learn about it. If we can't learn about it, we can't make any improvements. I wasn't around in the 50's but from what I've heard nuclear power was pretty exciting and our knowledge of harnessing fission expanded by leaps and bounds - can we say the same today?
Note that when I mention safety, I mean it in a fairly wholistic sense, from workers killed, to the chance of catastrophic accidents to disposal of waste. I don't personally think that workers killed per kilowatt-hour should be the dominant measure of on energy source's safety.
Hear Hear!
TANSTAAFL
Everything has it's cost.
Hydroelectric power, solar power, wind power, tidal power etc etc are all oft-cited sources of "clean", "renewable" energy. But the energy isn't free - it must come from somewhere. And if it is "free" then the natural processes that the energy would have powered must be considered "useless" All we are doing is diverting the energy to our own purposes, but we are much too young to know the long term effects.
If you keep damming rivers, you are taking away energy from the river. What would that energy have been used for otherwise? I can only think of:
Instead we ultimately use most of it to create heat, from the line losses in power lines to the 1ghz cpus on our desks. The only eroding we do is in mechanical parts that wear out & break and on the concrete of our roads.
Ditto for all the rest - by creating electricity from tidal flows, we reduce tidal flows, by using wind to power propellers in wind farms, we reduce the power of the wind.
What kinds of long term effects would large scale diversions of such energy be? I can only speculate, but how about:
I know that right now our effect on the planet in this manner of energy diversion is probably slight and of little interest, but perhaps one day this will no longer be true and we will have to be careful about what kinds of energy we use.
- How much energy does the sun dump on us each day?
- What portion of that can we safely use for line loss & playing quake before we have to start considering the effects?
- How much energy do we reflect back into space?
- What kind of equilibrium exists between energy we reflect and absorb?
- How does our release of potential energy in forms from fossil fuels to the atom affect this equilibrium?
- Maybe global warming has nothing to do with polution but simply is a result of our dumping heat into the air? (ok - we probably don't create anywhere near enough heat to affect the atmosphere as a whole too much - but one day we probably will)
These are all questions I've been thinking about lately - anyone else?Enough already! Some of us (me at least) have never seen it before and appreciate the pointer.
http://www.cuecat.com/faq.html
The page is 125K long and seems to be a query run against their support database. There are about 12 differently worded verions of, "Will cuecat work with a mac?", all answered seperately". Ditto for Q's about the red light being on all the time, the safety of the red light, etc etc.
I just submitted a question about using it with Linux - let's see if it shows up :)
I would like to become a Creative sock holder.
Where can they be purchased and what sizes are available? Do I have to just hold the socks, or am I allowed to wear them too?
Sorry no link but... I once read about a bug with the Nokia 6190 where if you shorted a couple of pins on the bottom of the phone, the display would go blank untl you turned it off or reset it.
Anyways, the implication of this was that you could set it on silent, no vibrate, auto-answer, nuke the display and then leave it somewhere close to sensitive discussions. Just call your phone and listen away.
>Oh, you mean like obesity?
Yes.
If this is really happening, I'm really sorry for your friend and all the other people in the world who derive their income from obselete froms of information distribution.
The world is changing. It is obvious that many people would rather get their porn/music/movies/whatever over the net than in physical form, many would argue that this is a long term trend. Of course there are IP issues to sort out in this new environment and they will get sorted out, one way or another, and we will move on.
Your basis for supporting the MPAA is about as solid as the tobacco companies crying, "but what about our employees?" as if keeping a few thousand people employed in a stangant industry was appropriate compensation for massive health care bills.
Disclaimer: I don't care what the tobacco companies do, but I don't want to pay for some one's self-inflicted degenerative disease.
Disclaimer: I hate all forms of IP and think the world would be a better place with no IP or significantly less. Given the mass of capital invested in IP these days I think it's unlikely I'll see its abolishment in my time, but I feel it's important to fight when IP rights are being extended & entrenched.
As soon as it costs $5 to play a video game & 1/2 of that goes to taxes, priorities will change.
Sounds logical to me. (the car bit, not the OS bit)
If it meant I had to fear just a little less for my life when I try to cross a 6 lane "neighborhood" street full of adrenline pumped drivers strapped safely into their airbag equipped and side impact rated SUV's - I'd be all for it.
For a one time pad to be secure, each key bit must be used once and only once, for whatever purpose. You could transmit a new key pad with an existing key pad, but you would use up one key bit for every one that you would receive, so you'd be better off not bothering.
Why is this so? Because a true OTP, properly implemented, is unbreakable. If you want to use a key pad twice, once for data, once for new keys, go ahead, but it's not an OTP any more and it's not unbreakable. i.e. you send an encrypted message and then reuse the same key bits to get more keys. I have some good guesses about the text of your message, so that means I can have some good guesses about the key bits which were re-used. Thus I can determine the new key bits which are being transmitted. Is is this likely? No. But it is, implemented like this, no longer unbreakable. That's why otp's are special, because, implemented properly, they are unbreakable.
Cheers.
I've seen references to this a few times now, and I can't let it go any longer. Is Napster really making money? How? In fact, how on earth do they plan to? Keep in mind that having lots of drooling VC's throwing money at you is not, by definition, making money.
... but this Elian-Wazzup sounds interesting - anybody have a link?
(From Netcraft)
bolero.ics.uci.edu
bolero.ics.uci.edu is running Microsoft-PWS/3.0 on NT4 or Windows 98
NT4 or Windows 98 users include Gillette, Burger King, and Ford.
Something about knowing they use the same web server software as burger king makes me all fuzzy inside.
The chart is no longer accessable - any one have it saved?
IANAVC, but my impression from the article is that this is not, "how things are done", but more of a warning of what can happen if they are done that way. If you recall from the article, the other partners were very concerned about completing due diligence before investing. That they changed their minds, of course, means they weren't concerned enough.
The story painted the other partners as much more mature and more analytical, but they got sold, and they got burned. Don't get sold, don't get burned.
Oh, and when companies do due diligence it's usaully accompanied by a hoarde of lawyers to make sure no one feels any incentive to take the information/business plan/whatever & go start something new up.
I think you're right about the stock challenge theory, but you may have been mislead by the first part or two of the article focussing on the choice the VC had to make.
Yes, there was an element of, "this man can't live with himself because the company he didn't invest in made millions", but it's not the main story.
The story is about some interesting personalities in venture capital and in cryptography. It's much more focused on venture capital though, especially how you know when your investment is lost and it's time to leave and move on. A difficult decision we have all had to make in different areas of our lives.
I thought it was interesting because I used to be an avid lurker in sci.crypt.* and I heard about this when it happened. But I heard the technical, scientific side of it. i.e. why a psuedo-OTP is not any kind of OTP at all. I did not get to see the financial/investment side of it, meet any of the players involved.
The bit about the man being upset at his wrong choice was really a throwaway at the end of a really good story.