Posts by BenWilson
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
OnPoint: BTW, the NZ Police can use…, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
Well anyone small enough to be intimidated by NSA agents anyway. No sovereign government is required to do as the NSA says with respect to it's security protocols, indeed they need not even say what they are. I have no idea what the Russians use, and would seriously doubt anyone who said that they do know, other than members of their own security agencies. And I would have no reason to believe a word they say, since lying and misinformation are their very business, as with the NSA. You really can't believe a word they say because they really do have a strong vested interest in you not knowing the truth.
-
OnPoint: BTW, the NZ Police can use…, in reply to Matthew Poole,
Reading the signals of foreign governments is, by far, the biggest interest of the intelligence services, with those of nefarious intent a close second.
Except that governments actually use strong encryption for anything secret enough to bother. They can, after all, organize a key exchange that can't be intercepted.
criminals/terrorists
Yes, private individuals, like I said. Since these people hide amongst the general population, they have to crack them all.
-
Hard News: Friday Music: Specks of Money…, in reply to Hebe,
All due to the band?
Just the drummer.
-
OnPoint: BTW, the NZ Police can use…, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
Interesting as to whether it’s a component or system-wide crack. Factoring public keys would give them full access to anything under than private key
My understanding is that the proof that cracking the keys necessitates using an algorithm whose complexity is exponential, comes down to showing that if you can crack them, then you’ve also solved the biggest conundrum in computer science to date. You essentially show that in some mapping of inputs and outputs, you are solving a known hard problem. So if they have found a poly-time algorithm for public key encryption cracking, then they’ve also made a scientific discovery of tremendous importance whose ramifications go far, far beyond code cracking.
I don’t know whether they have, but it certainly is an incredibly sad state of affairs that by far the bulk of people who could solve this problem, which would cascade into a massive number of technological breakthroughs, are bogged down on the stupid problem of trying to hack the security of private individuals. There is such an enormous budget soaking up all the smartest combinatorial mathematicians dedicated to something so worthless, and if they do solve it, they will keep what makes it really valuable to humanity secret.
-
Hard News: Jonesing, in reply to Carol Stewart,
You don’t believe in redemption?
I do think people can redeem themselves, so that they needn't be pariahs forever. But getting the top job is a whole 'nother thing.
-
Hard News: Jonesing, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
Or, you know, actually use your fucking brains.
Yes, this is my main criticism of Jones. I don't want someone so damned careless to be the PM.
-
Hard News: Jonesing, in reply to Tom Beard,
When did we start turning the clock back to the days of cloth-capped blokey-bloke wharfies and miners and catering to some vision of their supposed salt-of-the-earth misogyny and homophobia as an essentialised emblem of “true Labour” voters?
I think it started some time around when Don Brash came uncomfortably close to beating Clarke, off the back of Orewa.
-
Hard News: Jonesing, in reply to Tom Beard,
Surely they/we have been for generations.
It fits about 30% of the Labour voters I know :-)
-
Hard News: And one war ends?, in reply to Russell Brown,
True dat. I have a lot of time for Chris Fowlie, but some of the other people who’ve been associated with NORML really do not help their cause.
They sound like a bunch of stoners. OTOH, it is odd to expect that advocates for decriminalization should in no way resemble the people who would be most happy for it to happen.
-
Hard News: This time it's Syria, in reply to Simon Grigg,
11 years of unwon wars
I don't know that they see it like that. They took out Hussein, the Taliban, Bin Laden and Gadaffi, installing democracy in each place (how they would see it).
They're tired of ground war, I'm sure, and having trouble finding recruits by accounts. But I was talking about an air campaign, probably mostly using remotes. It could even be an assassination campaign, Obama's main contribution to American militarism. It's not a threat any dictator can take lightly, considering just how dangerous being a Middle Eastern dictator has become. It could, of course, backfire horribly - it's not like any of these dictators has just given up. I'd expect it to, in fact. It shouldn't be done. But it could be done.
Last ←Newer Page 1 … 314 315 316 317 318 … 1066 Older→ First