I thought it had something to do with the phrase "smoke and mirrors" which refers to a magician's attempt to hide the secret of his tricks. Apparently not, says Wikipedia:
A smoke-filled room is a term used in the United States to describe a gathering of minds secluded from the general public, often insinuating that the majority of people in the room is comprised of old, white males smoking cigars.
That said, i remember the good old days, when you didn't loan out your floppies without running a wipe program on them... otherwise the boys found your 'secret stash' that you just deleted.
You might want to rethink your life if your "secret stash" fits on a single floppy...
Just because (for example) someone doesn't have any respect for me to convey a timely reponse to me via email/sms/im/pm, doesn't mean I need to lower myself to that level.
I take it into account, but not with an I'll-get-back-at-you attitude. I simply figure that if someone is slow to respond to me, then that probably means that he checks his email less often. Thus it's not urgent for me to respond, as he might not get the new email for a couple of hours (or days or whatever) anyway. Inversely, if someone responds quickly, then another quick response means the conversation continues quickly.
Put another way, if the other guy is a bottleneck to the speed of the email conversation, then there's no point in replying quickly. Go with the flow. Nothing personal.
If a seller were to make it really easy to buy songs, people would buy them. If people can click once or twice and download the song they want, fast, then they will always buy. Which is easier: meeting someone in person with the song you want, getting to their computer, dowloading the song to a flash drive or whatever, and running back to your own computer and uploading the desired song... OR, for a price of $.99, click twice? Is the former method worth $.99 and the.001 calories needed to executed the latter method? For most, if not nearly all consumers, yes. If piracy is a concern, dynamically watermark the audio file based on the user's subscription ID or whatever so *cough* interested parties can know who the owner of an MP3 file is (or should be).
One might say that this is the model of today's iTunes. It is not quite that, because I did not factor in the headaches caused by DRM and the money necessary to buy "certified" media player(s) as opposed to whatever media player the consumer would otherwise use. That has a cost, too. It is a cost that outweighs the trouble of running over to your neighbor's house. If the music from iTunes or whatever futuristic distribution media does not have DRM, then the extra headaches and $$$ do not apply, and consumers would choose not to pirate, because it's easier to click twice and be done.
One might also say that the model I proposed wouldn't work because people don't actually need to run over to their neigbor's; they can just use peer-to-peer technologies and share music illegally. Again, there is a cost: the trouble of running these P2P programs, of searching for the desired songs, of maintaining the software, and the danger of being caught breaking the law. Is that cost too hefty? Hard to tell. So let's ask one more question. There exists abundant music piracy today; has that made music production unprofitable?
The team says the tactile sensor could, in the future, aid minimally invasive surgical techniques by giving surgeons a "touch-sensation".
This doesn't sound to me like surgeons looking at a display of light emissions. Is there some kind of method in place that would transfer the sense of touch from the machine to the surgeon(s)?
If decrypting the same data into two believable outcomes isn't possible, how about this: given a block of encrypted binary data, up to a half of the volume is the "real" data (but encrypted), and an identical amount is "fake" data. When the "real" key is used, the "real" data is decrypted, but when the "oh no, I'm caught" key is used, the "fake" data is decrypted into something innocuous. In both cases, you are left with a indecypherable block of gobbledigook along with the decrypted data.
This seems very possible to me, as long as no one can know where the real data resides.
Slashdot Mirror
DRM.
Oh, wait...
Thanks for asking, I learned something today.
You know bloggers hold leverage when the scoreboard says Bloggers 0, Smoke-Filled Room -2147483648.
I've never really understood why they can't return probes to earth and salvage some parts or something.
Who needs leaky mega-corporations when you've got the NSA?
Put another way, if the other guy is a bottleneck to the speed of the email conversation, then there's no point in replying quickly. Go with the flow. Nothing personal.
One might say that this is the model of today's iTunes. It is not quite that, because I did not factor in the headaches caused by DRM and the money necessary to buy "certified" media player(s) as opposed to whatever media player the consumer would otherwise use. That has a cost, too. It is a cost that outweighs the trouble of running over to your neighbor's house. If the music from iTunes or whatever futuristic distribution media does not have DRM, then the extra headaches and $$$ do not apply, and consumers would choose not to pirate, because it's easier to click twice and be done.
One might also say that the model I proposed wouldn't work because people don't actually need to run over to their neigbor's; they can just use peer-to-peer technologies and share music illegally. Again, there is a cost: the trouble of running these P2P programs, of searching for the desired songs, of maintaining the software, and the danger of being caught breaking the law. Is that cost too hefty? Hard to tell. So let's ask one more question. There exists abundant music piracy today; has that made music production unprofitable?
No, no it hasn't. QED
If decrypting the same data into two believable outcomes isn't possible, how about this: given a block of encrypted binary data, up to a half of the volume is the "real" data (but encrypted), and an identical amount is "fake" data. When the "real" key is used, the "real" data is decrypted, but when the "oh no, I'm caught" key is used, the "fake" data is decrypted into something innocuous. In both cases, you are left with a indecypherable block of gobbledigook along with the decrypted data.
This seems very possible to me, as long as no one can know where the real data resides.