Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×

Comment Re: Understanding the Indian retailers. (Score 2) 53

Indian customers are also very class conscious, they would eschew a cheaper product merely because their servant maids can afford them.

Is "class-conscious" some new euphemism for "assholes" that I haven't previously been aware of?

It depends. Is "I haven't previously been aware of" a new euphemism for "I have my head shoved so far up my ass that I've never noticed how societies work"? Because there is nothing new about this behavior anyplace. People were assholes about class indicators long ago, they are assholes about class indicators now, and they will be assholes about class indicators in the future.

Submission + - What Does The NSA Think Of Cryptographers? (i-programmer.info)

mikejuk writes: A recently declassified NSA house magazine, CryptoLog, reveals some interesting attitudes between the redactions. What is the NSA take on cryptography?
The article of interest is a report of a trip to the 1992 EuroCrypt conference by an NSA cryptographer whose name is redacted.We all get a little bored having to sit though presentations that are off topic, boring or even down right silly but we generally don't write our opinions down. In this case the criticisms are cutting and they reveal a lot about the attitude of the NSA cryptographers. You need to keep in mind as you read that this is intended for the NSA crypto community and as such the writer would have felt at home with what was being written.
Take for example:
Three of the last four sessions were of no value whatever, and indeed there was almost nothing at Eurocrypt to interest us (this is good news!). The scholarship was actually extremely good; it’s just that the directions which external cryptologic researchers have taken are remarkably far from our own lines of interest.
It seems that back in 1992 academic cryptographers were working on things that the NSA didn't consider of any importance. Could things be the same now?
The gulf between the two camps couldn't be better expressed than:
The conference again offered an interesting view into the thought processes of the world’s leading “cryptologists.” It is indeed remarkable how far the Agency has strayed from the True Path.
The ironic comment is clearly suggesting that the NSA is on the "true path" whatever that might be.
Clearly the gap between the NSA and the academic crypto community is probably as wide today with the different approaches to the problem being driven by what each wants to achieve. It is worth reading the rest of the article.

Comment Re:Illegal? (Score 4, Funny) 50

In China a lot of dinosaur fossils are sold in medicine shops. For some reason most Chinese still believe eating them cures disease and give you manly vigor.

Whereas in fact manly vigor comes from driving a dinosaur-sized truck that guzzles fossil fuel.

Comment Re: When pet theories die... (Score 2) 137

Like it or not, the term "God particle" was created by Leon M. Lederman for a book he wrote. Now, Dr. Lederman has won the Nobel Prize for Physics, the Wolf Prize in Physics, and the National Medal of Science. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that given a choice between you and him...well, he's the one who is right.

However, to be fair, once you've won your Nobel Prize, I'll start paying attention to your opinions compared to his.

Comment Re:When pet theories die... (Score 1) 137

And yet, there are zebras.

On July 4, 2012, CERN director general Rolf Heuer announced that his team had detected âoea particle consistent with the Higgs boson,â and that the discovery was confirmed by two separate experiments (ATLAS and CMS). However, Heuer noted that additional data was required to confirm that it was, in fact, the so-called "God particle."

The article basically says we've found something new, but by running some more tests at CERN, we can pin it down better. Which, as we can see from the quote, is also the belief of the people who made the discovery.

Nobody is saying the particle isn't "Higgs-like", or that it's not a major discovery, or even that we're misunderstanding its role. But, and it's an important but, we've never pinned it down exactly. Which every article I've ever read in the last couple of years has said. Using Wikipedia (dangerous, I know), it uses "tentatively confirmed" for a couple of test and notes values are slightly off the prediction for branching levels. (A term that I gladly admit to knowing nothing about, but if it's being mentioned, I would think it must be important for the verification)

Slashdot Top Deals

The one day you'd sell your soul for something, souls are a glut.

Working...