But the channel is NOT noise free.

And for it to have any measure of security provided by the quantum nature, it needs to be a dedicated circuit between all host pairs.

When you have a dedicated circuit, you need physical access to perform any attacks. Quantum or regular, it doesn't matter.

Given a dedicated circuit and an attacker with physical access, any unsuccessful MITM attack becomes a successful DOS attack.

Any successful MITM attack will require the private keys of one of the parties. You need both if you want to hear the replies, but you only need Alice's keys to have Alice say "Bob, you're a fag.".

Getting the key is the "hard" part. Just like it's "hard" to get someone's house keys. You can develop various attacks against the algorithm by playing in the noise threshold. It may take you months, years, or longer. It may not. But if you may have physical access to the source and detector, you could exploit all sorts of weaknesses in implementation, take the damned things, or just sit at Alice's terminal. Kind of like walking up to someone's door and trying to pick their lock, get in through a window, etc.

In the end it's all a key sharing problem, regardless of where you source your keys from.
If you have a dedicated circuit network, then you require physical access to launch an attack. Just as you need physical access to attack a dedicated circuit network using copper cable. Quantum stuff doesn't come into play.

And, as always physical access = Win.

The "security" of quantum communications comes not from the quantum nature, but from the fact that you're going to be using dedicated circuits between each host pair. This will never scale to the masses. Quantum communication along a dedicated circuit will pretty much only work in truly local networks and from Obama's to Putin (let's face it, Putin's in charge).

Step 3 is more like ???

PROFIT!!!?

No, seriously, step 3 is more like, "you have to press 'Yes' to continue"

What would one do if a cougar (not the large kitteh, but the type that's referenced in this story) ever came up to him? She'd have to find his cube, dorm, or DM's basement. I'd be more impressed that she'd even know where that is.

Well, that might account for the deterioration of chick quality that I observed in the NYT article.

It says "The California State University" at the top of the tuition info I quoted; if it's not the University of California, what the heck is it, then? Wait...memory is seeping back from the long years that have elapsed since I was a student at UC Berkeley from 1966–1970...I seem to dimly recall a cycle of re-orgs of the California college/university system; maybe this is part of the new—and infinitely more confusing—state of affairs? When I attended Berkeley, there was a college across the Bay called "San Francisco State College". They thought their demonstrations were as good as ours, but of course they were wrong—we, as a University, obviously had better (i.e., more violent and chaotic) demonstration than them. I think the same school is now a University. Are their demonstrations any good? And where is this "California State University" thing if it's not in California, and what is it, if it's not a State University? An ex-junior college?

designing a novel structure in a CAD tool optimised for some known series of simulations (i.e. knowing which parameters are relevant to each simulation and adjusting for them)

Uh... yeah, parameters like "aerodynamics". People use these simulations to make real aircraft that have to work, really. You can't just optimize for "relevant parameters" to cut corners around optimizing for overall performance in reality, because the simulations are designed to mimic reality as closely as possible and do a demonstrably good job of doing so. That's the simulation's purpose!

is not the same as proposing a design which can be prototyped, built, tested, flown... and paid for.

For sure!

Which is not the same as saying the design in the CAD program will not have closely similar behavior in the real world if they could build it.

Yup, you can take my usb stick and read it all you want. Unless you're particularly interested in seeing what I've been working on recently, it will quickly bore you silly. The most damage loosing it would do it inconveniencing me. Whereas encrypting the thing would prevent me simply hand it to people so they can access my files.

9% encrypt their flash drives vs. x% who cypher their paper docs before leaving the building?

I'm not saying it shouldn't be done - I'd hope someone actually carrying sensitive data around would encrypt it as a precaution, just as I hope the people I just sent a paper copy of my passport to will have the diligence to not take on the train and leave it on the table.

I myself doubt that wiretapping (even without encryption) is a desirable approach to get at data, as opposed to stealing computer drives. With the drives you get everything that has not been mailed yet as well as everything from years back, all in one go. Most evil doers would not only be interested in current correspondence, no?

It is also an issue of practicality. Drive encryption is very easy and unobtrusive to deploy and manage. The basic variant uses just the same password in the same login screen.

As opposed to that, key management, and other basic usage concerns on PGP or similar are not easy. Average Joe needs to know too way too much about how these things work, and IT Staff / Power users don't get enough flexibility. Your white collar people may have spared you a LOT of annoyances while you still were sysadmin, in fact.

It may be technically true but not meaningfully so.

No it isn't.

It's technically true that everyone will die sometime, but it isn't really meaningful in the context of making a film about it in the near future, which I presume the story is about (no, of course I didn't read it).

Sorry, I fscked it up for you. :-)

The central government in China is seen pretty positive by most people in China.

However many "mass incidents" (protests, riots, etc) are taking place, and the number is increasing. I have heard numbers of tens of thousands of such "mass incidents" each year, but hard to impossible to get any reliable numbers on that.

It is the local governments that are highly unpopular, down to local leaders being murdered and the village celebrating: such a case is now going on. This as many if not most local leaders are very corrupt, and have local business interests as well. This has issues for land rights and environmental pollution. It's those leaders that the protests are targeted against primarily. E.g. the local mayor owns a large share in the local coal mine, and will thus turn a blind eye on safety issues. Large brothels or gambling dens that were housed across the police station - the owner being a brother of the police commissioner.

You won't see much protest targeting the central government, and most of those are people asking for help in problems with local officials.

You could be right, but none of the things you listed creates wealth, so I'm not sure what the point of listing them was. What, other than labour, creates wealth?

Knowledge. And not just knowledge gained through experimentation or research, sometimes you can gain profitable information just looking out the window at the right moment.

And hence, you miss the OP's point entirely.

Each individual restriction has some benefit, and may have even saved some people some misery. And each one may make sense - depending on how much you value freedom vs safety.

As a kid, I had a pocket knife and a bb gun (later a .22). I worked for local farmers and rode (on the public road) on top of hay wagons and in the backs of pickup trucks. My folks let me wander off some pretty long distances without them. Much of what I did as a kid would not be allowed today for safety reasons. And that has probably saved somebody some grief, or maybe even their life.

But if I'd grown up in the same situation today, I imagine I'd probably have spent all day with the TV and Playstation. I'd have been safe, but out of my mind with boredom.

Well, while your opinion is appreciated, the article is talking about reboots. As far as "new" what about Fringe or Sanctuary?