Posts by Charles 9

Re: The Future is Nuclear

"Basically, we could have flying cars right now if not for the woes of the world."

No, people started thinking harder and realized ubiquitous flying vehicles only make sense in a world with no gravity. Otherwise, you'd be spending too much energy just staying in the air (which is unavoidable, again, due to gravity). Air travel only works in bulk or when time is of the essence and the customer is willing to pay through the nose for it.

Re: The Future is Nuclear

Why stop at alcohol? Why not go whole hog and manufacture synthetic hydrocarbon fuel? The US Navy is researching this for their aircraft carriers which have power to spare with their nuclear reactors, plenty of resources to draw from the sea, and an immediate need for jet fuel. Anything they can cook up can likely be adapted to more general uses.

Re: we don't fuel gas cars at home

Then what happens during rush hour when the "filling stations" get seriously slammed?

Re: Ultra conmuter

Or he could be a roving contractor or some other person who has to extensively drive his own car every day for a living.

Re: Why not SSD Drives?

Not for bulk storage. Not yet, at least. If time is not of the essence, then rust is still much cheaper at higher capacities.

Re: My Password is

Not necessarily. They could lump all the users of that password into one multi-defendant case. Unless each user then commits a serious crime with that access, the case can get settled in a general district court without need for a jury (depending on the jurisdiction, jury trials for criminal matters are only guaranteed for felonies).

Re: So ...

It's simple. Was the person who "published" the info granted the authority by the site owners to share this information (yes or no)?

Re: switching to linux

Most would reply that the revenue from them probably doesn't compare to that in the PC sphere, which is why there are still a lot of PC exclusives (and more by voluntary choice, not out of an exclusivity contract or first-party publisher)? Why haven't games like WoW made the jump to consoles that are able to support KB/M controls if necessary?

Re: Sorry Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, But Constitution Beats Your Wrong Opinion

Except practically no safe known to man has been able to beat a determined safe cracker. Thus why they're rated by time. Worst case, unless it's a vault, they find a way to dismount the safe and take the whole thing with them.

Electronic communications CAN, however, be permanently scrambled beyond recovery. Indeed, some adversaries SEEK this to break communications chains.

"They have, in short, repeatedly and wantonly committed the very act that the Fourth is intended to protect us from."

It's simple. If you're under perpetual existential threat (and can prove it, too, with things like 9/11) then it's very easy to claim anything is reasonable if your country won't exist tomorrow otherwise.

Not really. The key word in the Amendment is "reasonable". Thing is, what can you call reasonable when you're under perpetual existential threat?

Re: Actually, I think he is right

Do you think any military could survive having the enemy know everything about them? We still haven't figured out a way other than secrecy to deal with sheer overwhelming force.

Re: TL;DR all comments, but in science v. "the law" ...

But then they have to get together to actually get things done. Just make it hard for them and they'll be forced to change methods.

As for the one time pad, continual pressure could force them to keep ditching their pads in a panic, breaking communication chains. Remember, keeping them from communicating can be as effective as intercepting them.

Re: If...

One end may be outside your jurisdiction and you don't know enough about your end to establish probable cause.

How can the police do their work when hostile sovereignty gets in the way? The Internet makes using hostile sovereignty as a shield much easier.

Re: Encryption and the Fifth Amendement

Memory Theater and other mnemonics tend to rely on sequences to establish relations. It doesn't work so well when the recall is more random in nature.

As for extradition, that's up to the country currently housing the suspect. Generally, it has to be a crime in that country first before they'll even consider extradition. Differences in law provide an angle for political refugeeism.

You can still break it by recovering the key, which is normally too complex to commit to memory, meaning there WILL be a trace.

Or they simply state standing law prohibits a right to privacy, satisfying those Amendments' conditions.

Re: when crime is afoot

The Patrician felt the same way, IIRC.

Re: Actually, I think he is right

I've learned from firsthand experience that edge cases don't stay edge cases and that truth is stranger than fiction (see Edward Snowden).

Re: Different entropies

Okay, how about you compress the phone book, THEN apply the one time pad?

That's just one way to no destructively whiten the data. Other systems are designed to whiten incoming data known to be easy to analyze otherwise.

Re: "if the fate of the world depends on breaking an unbreakable message"

"Obligatory xkcd"

Like I said, what if he's 's MASOCHIST (as in, "Yeah! HARDER!" Wrench turns him on)?

Or what about a total wimp who, if you show or even threaten the wrench or anything like it, promptly faints?

Re: "encryption isn't protected by the American Constitution"

Cart-before-horse argument. What if decrypting that message is the KEY to getting or supporting all the other evidence? And supposing the suspect is a masochist to boot?

Re: Actually, I think he is right

What about ongoing black projects which have to be denied they even exist, whose revelation could bombshell major government relations if not start a war?

You Bet Your Life?

And as for the spanner to the kneecap, what if he's a masochist with no famly?

Re: Missing the first basic step

As the saying goes, you're screwed. That's why you can't really have "plausibly deniable" encryption a la TrueCrypt/VeraCrypt. Produce something capable of hiding something and the plods simply assume you're hiding something and lying about it (because if they take your word for it and there's a massacre, it's their heads). Not even staganography is immune to serious content analysis to reveal there's hidden content there combined with pervasive media mangling to reduce its possible flow to a trickle.

The point is, the key has to be at least as long as your message and able to be hidden from nigh anything, plus its nature makes it difficult to keep in your head. They'll just go after the hidden key. And if there's more than one, they'll take ALL of them to make sure they have the right one (and so as to discredit any placebos).

Re: SWIFT nasty software malware cyber-heist ..

It could well be that the banks pushed back too hard to resist. A standard isn't any good if no one uses it.

Re: 407000 words? A transparent farce

But won't that result in complaints, hoop-jumping, and click fatigue. They just want to get things done, not have obstacles put in their way. And remember that a lot of legalese is meant to avoid loopholing by way of misinterpretation.

Re: It's not about the obvious...

How about the opposite? If you DON'T pay attention to an ad, IT HITS YOU? Confirmed to have been going on in video games since at least the late 80's, as noted in the documentary series, "Buy Me That!"

But now you have to trust the ad network you hired, and there's a risk of a booby-trapped ad being associated with your game.

Re: Is the problem 'game developers' or scammers?

I do, but it's not the main TV being used right now, plus it's rather dated.

Re: They have failed...

But by knocking down the size of the board, you eliminate possibilities that may be necessary to complete the board. How can you be sure the reductions you make don't eliminate necessary positions? For example, in trying to solve a 5x6, you may lock yourself into a position that makes solving 6x6 impossible. How do you prevent this?

So basically you're saying we need a complete reset of IT altogether, back to the Stone Age, if you will, only it will likely end up more of the same since it's hard to do big things without a benefactor, and once you have a benefactor, he can lay claim to anything you do or make.