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Comment Re:Secure = Traceable (Score 1) 463

Here we go. Should really search first :-) http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/classes/6.805/articles/money/cryptnum.htm has some details of Blind Signatures and Double-spending Identification.

Of course, for this you need a government to allow banks to issue secure yet untracable digital cash. I can't imagine it would survive the first round of 'funding terrorism' charges.

Comment Re:Secure = Traceable (Score 1) 463

No, you just need sufficiently advanced maths. You need a system where you can create a signature one time anonymously, the signature providing enough information for a merchant to prove it is valid. However, if you create a signature two or more times with the same key enough information is revealed to destroy your anonymity making the fraud traceable.

My understanding is that at least one system like this had been written up well over a decade ago, but I have no idea if the crypto has survived peer review and cannot cite anything. Anyone know details of a system such as I described?

Comment Re:Unity (Score 1) 155

Considering the gnome-do like application launcher and the newer keyboard driven replacement for menus landing in the new version, I certainly wouldn't consider Unity 'intended for tablets and phones'. Unity is indented to be a common GUI across all form factors. I'm not sure who else it seriously attempting this. Maybe Google trying from the other end with Android? Or are they focusing on ChromeOS for the laptop and desktop form factors?

Comment Re:Browser based... ugh D: (Score 1) 105

The fundamental problem is that the user needs a trusted channel between themselves and the authentication provider. The only common & cross platform communication channel is a web browser. Native apps work around this by embedding a web browser, which is insecure in that they might be stealing your password. But the user experience is sucky, and most opinions seem to be that the existing systems have sacrificed too much usability for security.

Now it is supported by Google & Facebook, XMPP might be an alternative way of communicating with the end user that would work better for native applications, at least on the desktop. I suspect mobile devices would suck a bit here.

Comment Re:Finally.. (Score 1) 235

No, their business model depends of displaying adverts to their users. Want to display ads to Google users? You have to give money to Google. If Google sold that information, they would be cutting their own throats for short term gains because people would only pay for the information once.

Comment Re:There is room for both. (Score 1) 461

If you have a draft decent enough that it could be picked up by a traditional publisher, you have a draft decent enough to get an editor for a share of the profits. No need for cash up front. I think this will become a common model. And the end result will be a well edited book, unlike stuff that goes through the big publishing houses which certainly is not - if it is midlist they don't want to spend the money for more than basic copy editing (and its obvious they often don't even bother with paying a starving student to do even that!).

The Military

Submission + - Electromagnetic weapons that destroy electronics, (economist.com) 2

PolygamousRanchKid writes: The wars of the 21st will be dominated by ray guns. That, at least, is the vision of a band of military technologists who are building weapons that work by zapping the enemy's electronics, rather than blowing him to bits.

America's air force is developing a range of them based on a type of radar called an active electronically scanned array (AESA). When acting as a normal radar, an AESA broadcasts its microwaves over a wide area. At the touch of a button, however, all of its energy can be focused onto a single point. If that point coincides with an incoming missile or aircraft, the target's electronics will be zapped. BAE Systems, a British defence firm, is building a ship-mounted electromagnetic gun. The High-Powered Microwave, as it is called, is reported by Aviation Week to be powerful enough to disable all of the motors in a swarm of up to 30 speedboats.Disabling communications and destroying missiles is one thing. Using heat-rays on the enemy might look bad in the newspapers, and put civilians off their breakfast.

To every action there is, of course, an equal and opposite reaction, and researchers are just as busy designing ways of foiling electromagnetic weapons as they are developing them.

PRK: I can't wait to buy that issue of MAKE!

Submission + - 1000 Boat Armada to save Thailand (mcot.net)

stub667 writes: For the last several days, Thailand has been using an innovative strategy to drain flood waters from the inundated country. A fleet of 1000 boats are moored yet running their engines to push the water out to sea. From an earlier report in The Nation from Oct 11th "[Science & Technology Minister] Plodprasop said that this voluntary base project would help drain water three times faster, from two knots to six knots, and prevent floodwater from pouring into Bangkok City"
Brilliance or lunacy?

Television

Submission + - EU Court rules against exclusive TV licencing deal (digitaltvnews.net) 1

r5r5 writes: In possibly a ground braking rule European Court of Justice rules against exclusive rights to broadcast sporting events within a single member state. The motivation is that such an agreement would enable each broadcaster to be granted absolute territorial exclusivity in the area covered by its licence and would therefore eliminate all competition between broadcasters in the field of those services and would thus partition the national markets in accordance with national borders.
Could this be the beginning of dismounting the legacy system of exclusive distribution rights awarded to one company in one state?

Science

Submission + - DNA sequenced of woman who lived to 115 1

chrb writes: The DNA of W115 — an anonymous woman who lived to the age of 115 years and left her body to science — has been sequenced. Despite her old age, W115 showed no signs of dementia or heart disease, and tests at the age of 113 showed she had the mental abilities of a woman aged 60-75 years. Dr Henne Holstege, of the Department of Clinical Genetics at the VU University Medical Center in Amsterdam, has suggested W115 had rare genetic changes in her DNA which protected against Alzheimer's and other late-life diseases.

Comment Re:And they're every bit as evil as Facebook (Score 1) 267

I think you are misreading. They tell you to sign up with the name you are usually known as. They also support a separate profile for each and every gmail email address you have, and allow you to link and trivially switch between them without a login/logout dance. Pseudonym support was built in from day one, even if you can't use it for impersonating Justin Bieber.

It would be nice if this was all spelled out explicitly - searching for pseudonym or alias in the G+ help gives no results.

Comment Re:Quit making excuses (Score 1) 361

Good luck applying your moral argument to other countries legal systems. If you charge more than another country finds reasonable, they take that as oppression and exploitation. This is why generic drugs exist. This is why a blind eye is turned to piracy. By charging too much, you have opted out of the trade relationship and nobody really cares what you think or how much you whine, only about what threats you are able to follow through on.

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