Datamining is just a computation, an arbitrary computation. It has input value(s) and an algorithm which depends on computed intermediate values and finally an output(s). There is nothing special about the data that datamining works on which differentiates it from any other kind of data within that framework I described. This is the wonder of homomorphic encryption. It DOES let you do aribitrary computation without decrypting the data.

That's not the same as doing arbitrary computation on data whose general semantics you are totally ignorant of. Is it numeric data? Is it text processing? What is its format. Sure, you have to know that level of detail but that's like saying "this string is a pssword". Does it get you any closer to knowing what that specific encrypted password is? It does not.

Yeah but your counter argument doesn't account for the sheer scale of what VISA and the banking system do compared to Bitcoin. OK the banking system uses more electricity, but what is the amortized cost on a per transaction basis? That's the question. Accoring to TFA the answer is VISA is HUGELY more environmentally friendly and cost effective than Bitcoin and, and this is the point, always will be because by design Bitcoin makes it harder to obtain coins depending on how much processing power (energy) is being expended to obtain those coins at any given time.

http://motherboard.vice.com/re...

If all bitcoin machines went solar however, then we might have a different outcome. The practicalities of that, given that Bitcoin assumes distribution of computing power, are not in Bitcoin's favor either.

It has been my experience that many women enjoy and are actually better than men at UX design. The best books I have are authored by women and when I pass ideas or problems by others, women often bring better insights and ideas than men.

Sorry, but this time you're just wrong without stipulation. The whole point of homomorphic encryption and computation is the computor never has the key and the data is never decrypted. It remains encrypted throughout the computation.

They are doing this and then they're also doing a second thing, distributing the computation which is an ortho. concern to the homomorphic encryption and computation, in theory at least, if not in this implementation.

Homomorphic encryption is counter-intutitve to most of us. I had never heard about it until a few months ago. At first glance, it seems like a thing that can't be true; like relativity.

"..on different nodes, and
they compute functions together without leaking information to other nodes. Specifically, no single
party ever has access to data in its entirety; instead, every party has a meaningless (i.e., seemingly
random) piece of it."

Because there is no Naurus node in ay ATT room anywhere sucking up all internet traffic, duplicating it and sending it off to the NSA before sending it to its intended destination.

Don't get me wrong; the blockchain is fascinating and makes possible very interesting applications with far reaching societal implications. My own opinion is much blockchain applications will overshadow even the IoT in terms of revolutionary effect on society. Irrefutable verifiability is like a philosopher's dream.

But anything operating under the assumption that there is no entity that "has access to all of X" is just wrong out of the box, which is not to say it's useless out of the box or uninteresting, just wrong on that *very* significant detail

So if the plantiff can make "bad faith" claims about domain register renewal and seek to have the government impose sanctions why can't the defendant argue that the case itself is filed in bad faith seeking to separate the defendant from his righttful property? It's all about mens rea- or an intent to do evil , so isn't' using the court or police or prosecutor's office to induce people of good faith to achieve an evil result itself the much more serious crime?

Suppose the defendant is a domain name speculator? Is this kind of speculationi illegal now, an act of bad faith?

Suppose the defendant is a guy with a half baked dream involving his domain name, a dream which will never come true. Does he have to give up his dream because someone started a company and if so isn't this just more lawmaking to suit people with money?

Why is the litigant under no obligation to check on the state of domain names at the time he or she forms the company? If the domain name is taken and the seller isn't selling or an agreed upon price can't be struck, nthen find another name.

No, what I am saying is APIs are generally so isomorphic to their target subject matter that applying the law of copyrights without recognizing a fair use for independently RE-IMPLEMENTING the same API in a completely different code base is wrong.

Indpenedent code bases are going to have the same API interfaces just by dint of the subject they are expressing, as per my original examples.

Yes, this is not exactly the Google case, but the reasoning is the same thing. You would not want to copyright the words Table of Contents ina book's table of contents because that's what is IS./ In that case, even though there is a copyright on the book, the words "table of contents" are NOT copyrighted.

Code has a ton of this kind of thing in it. APIs are by definition there to meaningfully represent some independent reality we all share. The alternative is the first persn to write an API for a graph layout engine effectively OWNS doOrthogonalLayout() and everyone else has to express that idea in other language.

I think this is right. What Google was arguing was a maximalist position that the API was fundamentally uncopyrightable. I don't think that's right. A work is copyrighted upon creation. On the question of fair use however, they're exactly right. If Oracle persists in its path, it WILL destroy Java. Developers will simply leave it because they could without realizing it be guilty of copyright infringement ofr any of the code they write. Consider graphics APIs or graphing APIs . Of necessity, inorder to be faithful to the underlying mathematical, logical and structural realities these APIs are created to contorl, the names of classes methods and members virtually write themselves. doLayout(Graphics graphics) doOrthoginalLayout(Vertices, Edges) isConnected (Vertext, Vertex) . doHierarchicalLayout(Vertices Edges) isConnected(vertices, Edges) Etc etc etc onto a million and more narrow verticals whose entities and relationships are shared cultural knowledge. There's a reason Gosling left Oracle after just a few weeks. Oracles DNA is opportunistic, exploitative and indifferent to the common good. It's been this way for decades and decades and that means something. It means that everyone who has come up through the Oracle culture, who has withstood the test of time and "succeeded" all come to share the same world view. That's what a corporate culture is- the ongoing systematic elimination of people who don't fit the dominant corporate culture. Alowed to run over decades, it becomes a self-perpetuating machine with no need for any specific enforcer or even consciousness of what it is.. Nothing is going to change it, nothing is going to make Oracle see the light" They're Oracle.

"but the security team doesn't care about optimization, summarily blaming sluggishness on lack of SSDs. Are they blowing smoke?"

They're blowing smoke to a large degree. SSDs are lot faster however as anyone who ever bought one knows, they are not capable of speeding up the movement of a large number of files \all THAT much since the Windows Explorer builds in a huge overhead around every file transfer and this is what takes files so long to be copied from point A to point B. So to the extent that you're opening a lot of files, transfering their bytes into RAM, then closing them,. it's still going to take a significant amount of time.

Sure, if you have one HUGE zipped file then SSDs are all that and a slice of cake, as advertised, but not much of what you're describing involves moving large files to and fro. Processing many files you;re going to see some speed up but mostly it's the processing itself that takes the time.

Yes, it's faster to read and write with an SSD but you'd be shocked how often the actual speed of reading into memory and writing out to disk has to little to do with how fast something happens on your computer. I was.

No you can implement transactional processing with full ACID guarantess on top of a non-transactional, non-fail-safe file system, even on that quits mid process- i.e. the plug gets pulled out in the middle of a transaction. Absolutely you can. I refer you to Jim Grey's "Transaction Processing" probably the greatest book on this subject ever written. He explains it so well anyone could implemnent it. Reading that book made me realize I COULD write a fully functional database if the urge was ever to overwhlem me. It will make you realize that too.

God bless you Jim, wherever you are.

Yeah it's great for blowing jihadiis out of their Lexuses in Yemen but that doesn't mean it scales for civilian contexts and populated areas where, you know Newton's Laws of gravitational force act on bodies. You can't have even 4 lb objects flying anywhere they want because each one turns into a downward missle as soon as it malfunctions for any reason whatsoever or runs into a power line or a bird or whatever (whatever =~ 1 million other unforeseen events).

Air space is controlled by the FAA , just some people don't understand that and think drones==kites, 'cause , you know , they're both marketed as harmless toys.

We're not going to be a society whizzing drones overhead ala The Jetsons with falling anvil warning signs ala The Roadrunner everywhere. This is where Hanna Barbera visions of the future break down.

We'll have makebot manufacturing in our general localities before that happens.

Amazon wants to do this and even with all their power to buy the votes of politicians, it aint' gonna happen.

You're just parroting what comapies have always said about everything from anti-lock brakes to air bags ...oh it's too expensive, it will destroy the market,

What you're preaching is the inevitability of market failure- that markets can't build X at a profitable price. Then someone does it or they all get forced to by legislation. Then everyone forgets what businesses were saying about how it can't be done. Then businesses trumpet technology X in their ads as their great technological leap and proof they're consciencous corporate citizens.

Rinse and repeat.

Get a new argument.

Yeah it's like this. Until physics prevents a flying drone that fails or is interfered with from following Newton's Laws, drones are too dangerous to be flying over populated areas.

Even "failsafe" parachutes only slow the descent of the 100lb mechanical thing landing on the pedestrian, window, moving car, bridge, darkened road, power line, etc. etc. et fucking cetera.

"People paying high rents have a harder time saving for a down payment, preventing tenants from exiting the rental market. "

That's not a bug, it's a feature.

>>No. The 'catching terrorists' angle is simply the cover story used to justify the construction of the surveillance state.

Not a chance that that statement is true.