They save lives, not money.

I provide a slightly different version of my personal data each and every time I need to give them out. Thus if they are leaked/sold/whatever I know who did it, and possibly whom to blame/drop/sue. [Actually, I'm a T-Mobile customer and I haven't had problems. Then again, I don't live in the UK :) ]

To be precise, Nash equilibrium (for 3-person games) was shown to be PPAD-complete (rather than NP-complete). You are right, though, it is not known that PPAD (or, for that matter, NP) requires more than polynomial time -- but it is very widely believed by very knowledgeable people with very good reason that it does!

Listening to the Willy Lomans of the world is no substitute for insight and understanding. As Plato might have put it, either the managers had better understand technology or the techies get to manage.

>The SysInternals guys wrote a nice article about it once, I think, but I can't find it any more. http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897446.aspx "Hidden Registry Keys". I enjoyed running Reghide back then.

Funny, I could swear I saw a stateline sign last time I drove on I-15... Must have been a desert mirage -- all those half-built and now abandoned Vegas hotels clouding my sight!

>> Some machines don't have serial ports

>>

Indeed -- but their motherboards might. I did locate unused pins labeled "serial port" on one, tapped into them, made a serial cable and presto!... my old 56k dialup modem was happily singing again, side by side with its more advanced networking brethren.

It wasn't exactly a free call when I was dialing in (to a local Los Angeles number) and going on Usenet or downloading via Kermit and zmodem for 48 hours straight -- I did have to pay for a local call (20 cents or so). But the price was certainly right!

The spam situation has gravitated to a balancing point. It is no more than a trifling problem for me, the user (in my Yahoo email accounts maybe 2 or 3 spam messages per day get past the filters and reach my Inbox; in my Gmail accounts even fewer), the spam mailers get paid for their "services", I suppose, and the only ones getting the shaft are those who elect to advertise in this manner -- I should like to think they are wasting a substantial part of what they pay the spammers. Or so it ought to be -- WHO, for the love of Intel, still clicks on spam ads??

Even so, I hate to see the Courts going overboard. Mr. Gordon may have misused the law, but a $110k fine seems grossly excessive -- and OUT of balance.

The horny divorcee, huh (Remembering a classic, http://www.columbia.edu/~sss31/rainbow/prog.lang.html)

Those liberally/scientifically educated chaps just might be under the spell of the Mullahs' moolah.

Thomas Pynchon envisioned shit hitting the fan, but never in such a globally spectacular manner. (With international repercussions no less)

They didn't even bother to Ask Slashdot :(

A popular explanation of how it was done can be found here: http://www.mail-archive.com/cryptography@metzdowd.com/msg10571.html

It is up to every individual to assess the situation and decide, but I for one when I hear people living under a theocratic appointed-for-life dictator protest that they are being denied even a modest voice in running their country, and ask for my help, I am inclined to give it.

Net access will help clarify facts, for starters. I have just heard an oral report that the number of dead is not 1, as the regime claims, but more like 30 or 40. I have no way of verifying this as it is, but if we provide communication channels to the Iranian people we might obtain videos and testimony. Piercing the veil of secrecy and fear that supports oligarchs.