How come history is written so that "Modern Cryptography" starts when an American writes a paper, some seven years after the British have developed computers to automatically crack Germany's enigma codes? Modern cryptography isn't just the creation of the cipher, but the appreciation of modern techniques to crack it.

If this article can make such an arbitrary assumption about what is modern, I give little credit to how misinformed the rest of the article may be. It's how Americans steal history, so they can define it in their own favor.

I do not mean to flame. I am just skeptical of assumptions, when such a basic assumption is so inherently wrong.

Or, my experience with APD. Sitting in a restaurant, two APD cops are seated in the booth behind me. They start talking about their new laser equipment and how it's much better than the old radar equipment. One then describes how he likes to inflate speeds by, I quote, "I can easily add 20 miles to the speed of a car." Wow. Just wow. Then, they start talking about the problem of "knowing black people are guilty of something" and using "throwdowns" they'd have taken off people earlier in the evening, and the best places to keep those stashes safe without getting in trouble. Uber wow.

Obviously, in reporting this, I have something to fear from those officers, so I would be inclined to report anonymously. However, I'm not a chickenshit and am prepared to stand up in court and repeat what I heard, if forced by the police. It's very hard for them to coerce people who are willing to speak openly, and who have access to forums the size of /.

Good point, you ratbastard!

Here are the questions I'd suggest you ask yourself:

The downloaders are probably unlikely to buy your book at retail anyway, but they do bring you more exposure. Given that they are not costing you much income, how much time/money do you want to invest in pursuing them?

The people offering the downloads are probably working on the assumption that you/the publisher don't care. Often, a simple contact from the author/publisher will get the result you want, as they prefer the easy route.

My usual course of action is to ignore the downloaders. I usually drop the people offering the downloads a nice note saying that they're publishing my work, and if they'd send me half the money they made and stop it, I'd go away. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't but just go away. Those who continue, regardless, I see if the site is in the USA then send a DMCA notice. I also proactively work to ensure my own/publisher's sites are the primary matches for my publications.

Most importantly, I don't lose any sleep over it, or invest much time in it. It's not a big loss to me, and the intangibles I gain from it are worth more to me as a specialist writer. I figure an hour of my time is worth $25, and if it won't earn me $25 in royalties, chasing these people is time badly spent.

IMHO

Have you learned NOTHING from the lesson of H. Keith Henson?

I dunno. Rumor has it Jade Goody had sex with Stephen Hawking because she wanted to be like Marilyn Monroe. Maybe he's got severe HPV? *eeps*

The "Insightful" tag is only for ironic effect. You're not supposed to make insightful posts, you fool! :P

Check out the intercom at uberworld for a list of most of the PG+ talkers that are still up. And you're welcome.

And people still use them! telnet://uberworld.org:2020/

Wouldn't that make upskirting too enjoyable for the victim?

Yeah, and this was the mistake I made. 237, 273... Ah the price I pay to make a joke about "Intelligent Cold"! :)

Shoulda got me some "Intelligent Dumb!"

-242C is a temperature that doesn't exist, unless your religion allows temperatures below absolute zero. All we need now is a campaign for Intelligent Cold. ;)

If I am ever stopped, I'll ask for a Breathalyzer test, over a roadside sobriety test, any day of the week. I would much rather have a carefully designed, well calibrated machine prove in seconds that I'm sober, than give a cop the opportunity to make a subjective judgment about me.

To me, this looks like a case of a bunch of guys who got nailed over the limit, who are attacking the one plank of evidence against them. OK, so it may not be 100% accurate, it may only be 96% accurate, or 90% accurate, but that means if you were convicted with a BAC over .09, you were STILL over .08 regardless. I bet a lot of these people are convinced they were less lubed up than they actually were.

I think the biggest objection is that there can be no 'informed consent' for this individual, and they would have no privacy. This breaks almost every tenet of the Belmont Report and the Helsinki Declaration.