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Comment: Re:Wake me when the Voynich is cracked (Score 1) 141

by AhtirTano (#28566891) Attached to: 200-Year-Old Cipher Finally Cracked
Actually, natural native languages were not used as unbreakable cyphers. That's a myth. The code-talkers were trained to do this, and devised a code based on their language. (And actually, the program started in WWI and was so successful they revived it for WWII.) The Japanese figured out that Navajo was being used, and searched out Navajo speakers among POWs to translate. But because the code-talkers actually encoded their message during the translation into Navajo, even these POWs were unable to figure out what was going on.

Comment: Re:Right, that's the only reason (Score 4, Insightful) 467

by AhtirTano (#28395993) Attached to: Man Attacked In Ohio For Providing Iran Proxies
So Democracy in Iraq, neighbors to Iran, had no influence at all on Iranians *also* wanting real elections?

No. I had Iranian friends and roommates in grad school starting in the early 2000's. According to them, this is the most blatant the vote rigging has ever been. The guys fresh out of Iran before the last election (not the current one) told me point blank that Ahmadinajan was going to win for domestic economy reasons.

The problem with U.S. support is NOT that the Iranian regime will crack down harder. The problem is that the US government is so unpopular there, that if we support them openly, many influential people will abandon the movement. It happened back in the early 90s with Bush Sr., and it could happen again.

Comment: Re:Math. (Score 1) 803

by AhtirTano (#28244377) Attached to: How Do You Greet an Extraterrestrial?
Greg Bear's book "Anvil of Stars" has an alien species where non-sentient Cords come together to form aggregate, intelligent beings called Braids. Because sentience isn't available until multiple Cords have come together, and there does not appear to be a limit on the number of Cords that can aggregate, the Braids never developed a concept of "integers". One Braid (a collection of multiple Cords) can merge with another Braid to form a single Braid: 1 + 1 = 1. All math, therefore, is based on fractions, not whole numbers.

"Who cares if it doesn't do anything? It was made with our new Triple-Iso-Bifurcated-Krypton-Gate-MOS process ..."

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