Posts by John Savard 2460 publicly visible posts • joined 18 Sep 2007
Since the only flaw in this elliptic curve random number generator is that it is possible that the NSA might have generated and retained a private key which lets them crack it, and it is otherwise fully secure, NIST may actually have overreacted.
While it is appropriate to say that this potential flaw makes that algorithm not recommended depending on who you don't want to read your mail, the NSA isn't one of the bad guys that is a threat to the U.S. government. Thus, use of that algorithm should not make a crypto implementation non-compliant with the standard - at least for most uses.
For some uses, like signatures, or financial transactions, the mere possibility that anyone can crack the underlying crypto, though, is unacceptable - it's not best practice to risk a dishonest NSA employee. So, since crypto is used for things like that, where the U.S. government shouldn't even trust itself, perhaps they didn't go too far.
I remember reading about a climb of K2, and the account noted that like Everest, it was on the border with China. I looked in an atlas, and found it nowhere near Pakistan's border with China.
Later, I found that Pakistan, in a 1965 agreement, ceded a lot of territory to China, but atlases show the boundaries set by Britain and recognized by India.
It's easy to mock those who favor Apple products for getting excited about Apple offering a choice that has already been long available for Windows (in the case of the Mac) or for Android (in the case of the iPhone). But they have their reasons for finding Apple products to be of better quality.
I don't know. Maybe your customers are supposed to be stupid instead.
But I don't think so. Windows, in comparison to Linux, is so popular, and uniform, that there is a lot of useful and interesting stuff you can get for Windows that you can't get for Linux.
And since Linux is free, Windows users have a proven track record of being willing to spend money on software. Wait, it's almost impossible to buy a computer without Windows pre-installed, unless it's a Mac? Oh, well, that probably explains software piracy.
It's a pity that the Power PC has not obtained more popularity, but without a popular operating system with lots of applications, like Windows or Android, it's not surprising.
But what about zSystem hardware? If that isn't profitable for IBM, then it might have to follow the example of Unisys, and start building everything from x86 hardware, relying on software emulation. Even given today's efficient techniques of JIT compilation, it would be a sad day when that happens.
It's almost a pity that Microsoft didn't do what Apple did, but in the opposite direction - port Windows over to either the Power PC or SPARC, architectures which are both available to all for free or low-cost licensing, so as to bring about a truly competitive microprocessor market.
Don't forget that the inability of the ear to directly perceive the phase of an audio signal... doesn't mean that the relative phase of harmonics doesn't affect the sound when it encounters nonlinearities. Which the human ear does have, not being designed with 99.9% negative feedback.
If the light were in a single pixel, or in several pixels belonging to a scan line, I would have no problem accepting that it was due to radiation interfering with the rover's electronics. However, the image given with the article seems to indicate otherwise, although I suppose that could conceivably be a compression artifact.
However, this doesn't mean Edison on Mars just yet. Perhaps the sun's glare reflected off of a shiny rock on Mars, which could even explain why it only showed up on one of two stereo cameras.
Well, clearly the next thing to do is to make it illegal to operate a drone unless the control signals to it are encrypted, meeting a standard of security set by the government, so that there can no longer be a question of anyone but the nominal operator of the drone being responsible for its movements.
The reason why it seems unlikely that antimatter falls up is because we do have experimental proof that energy falls down, instead of not falling at all. The Eotvos experiment shows that forms of matter with a high energy content still have exactly the same ratio of gravitational to inertial mass.
Well, you see, China is a signatory to certain trade agreements with the United States. And suppression of free speech in China may, among other things, interfere in the ability of American companies to compete in the Chinese market.
Otherwise, yes, American courts would have no jurisdiction.
Baidu isn't a forum, it's a search engine like Google that forms the major way in which the Chinese people find things on the Internet. And there's obviously no legitimate reason to take offense to the facts about the Chinese government's suppression of Tibetan culture or the Falun Gong faith.
Had they sued the government of China, or the Chinese Communist Party, for issuing orders to Baidu, or for interfering with access to Google, this paradox would not apply. (Incidentally, in the United States, this paradox would actually be good law, liberating cable companies from having to carry "public access" channels whose content might offend some customers.)
Unfortunately, such a suit would not go better for the plaintiff, as in that case sovereign immunity would apply. Nice try, though.
If I wanted a supercomputer, I'd be more concerned about its 64-bit floating-point performance. Nvidia does make special parts aimed at the supercomputer market instead of gamers wanting high performance video, but this doesn't sound like one of them. The Tesla K40 is roughly comparable to the original Titan, but it costs $5,300, not $999.
Aren't American companies by law required to take action in response to all claims of infringing material? Imposing a limit on the number of claims submitted by a rightsholder, unless specifically authorized by the law, would be a violation which would rob Google of its Safe Harbor protections.
Of course, if the law allows such limits, because of the cost burden involved, the rights groups shouldn't blame Google for making use of them, but should blame Congress.
I can understand being upset because a company has elevated someone to the position of CEO whom they perceive to be bigoted.
However, it is unclear to me that there are any acceptable alternatives to Firefox. Internet Explorer? Chrome? I can't really take either one seriously; unfortunately, Firefox recently copied Chrome in how new tabs behave, and got rid of an easy option to temporarily turn off JavaScript, but it still is far ahead of other choices in user interface.
However, I've read that Firefox does have a dwindling market share; this surprises me, as it seems far and away the only serious major choice.
I found a site where this was being discussed, and they seem to have found the patent. (US 20110305919 A1, CA 2801418 A1, EP 2580374 A2, WO 2011156676 A2 and A3) Phosphorescent particles are to be mixed with the brass with which the coin is electroplated, following methods used for putting lubricant particles in certain types of machine part, and so they will remain present on the surface as the coin wears.
I was able to find out that the new technology in these coins was disclosed - in a patent. And that patent was issued to a firm in Wales. However, reading about the problem, the 3% of the current pound coins that are counterfeit still get detected in vending machines; the problem is when people get them in change. So an RFID-like magic security system that allows vending machines to detect coins infallibly, while nice, is solving the wrong problem. But the microprinting and fancy milling may help people to recognize the real thing, so the actual problem is also being addressed.
Incidentally, note that transistors you can see through, made out of materials containing Indium, are printed on active-matrix LCD displays, which are just about all LCD displays these days. So one could have an RFID on the outside of the coin. I suppose with a layer of glass or clear plastic or something so that the coin doesn't become 'counterfeit' as soon as it is scratched.
The iSIS site doesn't say very much about what this type of security is based on. As noted, metal being conductive, one wouldn't think one could put an RFID chip in a coin, but the way they're talking about how secure and quick to validate it is, one can hardly think of anything else that would achieve it.
One sees microprinting from the picture of the coin, as well as fancy milling, and they do say that it's plated rather than really built from two parts in different metals.
If we avoid counting the faces created by the raised lettering on the obverse and the faces created by the incised microprinting, because that way lies madness, such as counting two faces for each milled grove, then I count 40 faces. 12 sides on the edge of the coin. On each face, there's one face with a hollow center. Inside that, there are 12 sloping facets with the microprinting. Then there's the actual obverse or reverse of the coin. So it's 12 plus two times 12+1+1.
However, looking at the picture of the coin lying down in the other article, it may have had another 48 faces that I neglected, since the angled faces seem to have vertical faces above and below them in that position.
Somebody should pay for the cost of bandwidth sufficient to access services like Netflix.
That somebody would normally be the ordinary Internet surfer.
The only point of debate here is whether he is already paying that cost, and the companies wanting money from places like Netflix just want to inflate their profits. But let's assume that is not the case.
What's wrong with offering consumers the choice of a discounted Internet service that can't handle video streaming? Well, not much; dial-up may have been derided, but it was never controversial.
Cable Internet that only handles video streaming from sources that provide advertising revenue to your ISP... what's wrong with that? Well, the problem is that it looks like a real high-bandwidth Internet service, but it really isn't. It's confusing and deceptive. That's the legitimate argument in favor of (one of the aspects of) net neutrality.
When it comes to torrenting and the like, though, I'm surprised net neutrality got as far as it did, given the level of concern about piracy.
There is an argument for net neutrality, but the arguments that stand on solid foundations need to be put forwards explicitly, instead of expecting everyone to just agree that net neutrality is a sacred principle that must never be abrogated.
We will need to move our entire civilization underground, so that our computers and communications networks will be shielded from this kind of event. Of course, farmers will still need to work on the Earth's surface; perhaps they can keep in touch using fiber optic links!
Keeping electrical lines short will limit how much current can be produced in them by induction from things like solar storms, so we will want to go away from large interconnected power grids.
Here's an idea: the five-year old computers that people are throwing away as junk now, why not bury them in caves far underground, so that we can use them after a solar storm fries all our computers up here while waiting for the computer manufacturing industry to be rebuilt? That would be better than tearing them apart to recover toxic metals or whatever. If we don't have a solar storm, at least this will prove to future archeologists that it wasn't a myth that people had computers in the 21st century.
Apple was doomed before Steve Jobs came back to take its helm. Now, the Macintosh is still doomed, but even if I'd never buy an iPhone, iPad, or iPod, I have to admit they're doing well for Apple. While Steve Jobs was alive, it was fair to call Apple a cult built around him.
So now since nobody else in Apple is likely to be the genius Steve Jobs was, or would be trusted to come up with any "insanely great" ideas on his own, I would tend to imagine that people at Apple are still asking themselves WWSJD - What Would Steve Jobs Do - a lot. Hopefully, though, they're not letting this tendency lead to paralysis.
Since Steve Jobs' passing, they have released new versions of the Macintosh and of the iPad which seem credible enough. Can they do something so spectacular as to prove to everyone they're not just coasting on their success under Steve Jobs? I think it's best for Apple if they take their time before making such attempts: even some of Steve Jobs' ideas flopped in the marketplace, after all.
Since the chip is aimed at mobile devices, it's quite understandable it's specialized for doing calculations in single precision and half precision. But I'll be more excited if the same technology gets applied to better parts for doing double precision calculations.
Which reminds me. When the IBM 360 replaced the IBM 7094 and friends, there was a lot of complaining that while 36-bit floating point was good enough for a lot of scientific work, 32-bit floating point was almost a dead loss from that point of view. IEEE 754, with a hidden first bit, and a base-2 instead of base-16 exponent, tries to improve matters for 32 bits as much as possible, but changing 29 bits (32 minus 3 for the smallest hex first digit) to 33 bits (32 plus 1 for the hidden first bit) doesn't get you to 36 bits.
So parts with faster 36-bit or 48-bit FP than possible for 64-bit FP might please some boffins.
I'm pretty sure that now they'll be found quickly if they're still in the Ukraine. Belarus was a center for viruses that dialed 900 numbers there when it was ruled by a corrupt pro-Russian leader, and so under Yanukovych they probably thought they were safe. So they're very likely to be in Russia by now.
It's unfortunate that in a circumstance like this, the fact that deaths resulted from the illegal ransomware activity won't result in a murder conviction for those responsible. The laws need to be tightened up.
Of course, as long as Russia remains in possession of nuclear weapons - which got into its hands as a result of illegal espionage activity against the United States - it won't be possible to really deal with all these types of crooks.
The benefit of a low market share for Linux, security, even if through obscurity, was mentioned.
The drawback of a low market share is, of course, a more limited availability of third-party software. There's a reason why Windows sells so well, and it isn't anything written in nice, friendly letters on the box either. (Mind you, it would be helpful advice for when you see a blue screen...)
Simpler would be to use a balloon with hydrogen that can be easily generated and cheaply disposed of to provide the marginal extra lift required to allow the ship to land. But flammability is a concern as the Hindenburg demonstrated - could a small balloon with the hydrogen be isolated from everything else, as opposed to the big helium balloon, so as to reduce this to tolerable levels?
Well, then the legal action should simply be restarted, since presumably the school is still guilty of ageism. This time, though, it would have to go through to the end, with an in-court award.
An out-of-court settlement is a contract, so we can't fault the courts for enforcing contracts, but it shouldn't be a way for miscreants to escape justice.
Apple makes premium priced products, the way IBM does. Microsoft Windows is, on the other hand, used by nearly everybody. Microsoft is in danger of being abandoned, but that's because of the functionality of Windows 8, imposed for a specific marketing reason (getting an App Store cut from everyone, not so much selling tablets).
Of course, there are similarities. IBM and Microsoft both profit from lock-in. Dialing back the extent to which one exploits one's market, though, is not the same as an upheaval in corporate culture.
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