However, some people have truecrypt (and bestcrypt and PGP and GPG and Utimaco and Pointsec) installed for legitimate testing, benchmarking and study.

I guess if you need to use one, maybe you should become an expert at cryptography so you have a very legit reason to have it installed. :-)

That's not how truecrypt works (and many other crypt systems).

the files are random data with no extension (unless you choose to put one on it).

You have to point to them from WITHIN the encryption program. Until you've done that, there's no evidence that the file is anything other than random data.

I wrote a program not too long ago to test for entropy levels in various pseudo-random algorithms. I would wager than a PhD in crytography would have a very hard time telling those files apart from a strongly encrypted container.

Ahh yes then, when you're 50, can you seriously be expected to be held in prison because you no longer remember a password that you made when you were 19?

No, it's not indefinite, I wager.

Cryptographically speaking, each added character makes it an order of magnitude more difficult than the previous character.

For a keyspace attack, beating a 50 character password is exactly the same amount of complexity as the ENTIRE SUM of the previous 49 characters possible passwords, times the keyspace for that 50th character.

So no, it reduces the complexity by half, but we're still talking about a septillion years on a quadrillion supercomputers (and more passwords than there are atoms on earth, etc, etc).

The fundamental issue is that if you... for example, fail to produce the physical key, whether through malice or omission, you are not liable for a crime. The police simply appear with a plasma cutter and begin to cut the safe apart.

Safes are rated to the amount of time a skilled safe cracker would take to break into it. A good home safe is rated to a few hours.

Encryption, in that same vein, is also basically rated to the length of time it would take to crack. The difference is that a good bit of encryption is rated to longer than the expected life of the Universe.

However, I'm not sure that "I forgot the password" or "that is just a blob of random data for an experiment", both of which should render "reasonable doubt" as to the existence and accessibility of the encryption key, making the law seem a bit silly unless someone is dumb enough to walk in and sign a confession "sure, it's encrypted, and I won't give you the key"

A few studies (they're really hard to find and finance) that try to determine the number of people in a population who are pedophiles, seem to indicate that they represent a non-trivial amount of the population (at least several million in the US/Canada) and something like 60-90% of them never do anything illegal.

Do you SERIOUSLY advocate locking up all of these people to "err on the side of caution"? Yeck.

In many states, mandatory reporting laws have been interpreted to apply to those who merely express "pedophile tendencies" under the "imminent threat" statutes. Reporting does not often lead to prosecution, but it can. It can also lead to civil action such as social services intervention or execution of restraining orders.

I cite Indiana case law "Kevin Brown vs Indiana c 2006". His biological child was taken from him and his same-aged wife because he called a radio show and admitted to being attracted to kids. He had already informed his wife and friends and even had written plans to ensure that he would never be in a situation he could even remotely be accused of abusing a kid. Nevertheless, his child was taken by "emergency order of protection", by a squad of armed officers. In order to ensure his child didn't end up in foster care, he had to move out of his house, after which they placed the child with his wife and issued a restraining order against him "ad litem".

He took the case to the Indiana supreme court and lost. The conclusion was that there was no obligation of protection of liberty for someone who was an admitted pedophile because he represented an "imminent threat" and he could be subject to civil action by social services or otherwise.

Additionally, in California, in "Jack McLelan vs California c2007" a pedophile loudly proclaimed his attraction to young girls. The district attorney of his area applied a restraining order, barring him from being less than 10 meters from a child, or 100 meters from anywhere children congregate. This ban actually legally prevented him from entering the court, since there was a daycare facility in the same building, though they chose not to prosecute him for coming to his own hearings. He opted to leave the state rather than fight the restriction.

Presumably, a similar argument could be made in some states to raid his house and seize his electronics to search for illegal material, based on the "imminent threat" argument, though I'm not aware of that having been attempted, though it wouldn't surprise me if it had and simply didn't reach the public airwaves, due to the lack of notoriety of the target.

Actually, more often, they call him daddy or uncle (statistically, yes, seriously).

LOL. You said fark.

Why not just leave it at that? It would be more accurate than what you just posted. :-)

Pedobear is a joke. Period.

Did you just seriously argue that alcohol consumption is punished more harshly than child sexual abuse? ....

HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!

Personally, the advice stands.

However, in your situation, I would not hesitate to gripe about it, even while I followed it.

Perhaps I reacted more to the fact that you presented this advice without any commentary on that situation at all.

I think it's one of the fundamental problems of urban living... the lack of community. When Mr Teacher was seen by every student when he visisted the barber and the butcher and the blacksmith, it would be absurd to say "don't fraternize with students", but today that seems reasonable because we live in these huge anonymous conglomerations.

Ugh. I find it somewhat gross to think of. Personally, when i was young, I had a number of teachers I saw on a regular basis outside of school, including one who's house I visited often and another who was a friend's parent and would take us camping in the summers. As a result of those two, other teachers would be over for barbecue or whatever and I knew 8 or 10 on a friendly level outside of school.

School was much easier for me, even as a nerd, when the teachers all saw me in a more personal light.

Our culture is sick and broken that this is "inappropriate". :-)

This is absurd.

The pillars of being a good teacher in the past were

1) Establishing mentoring relationships with students
2) Physical contact such a hand on the shoulder, is clearly shown through many studies and many generations, one of the best ways to establish a bond wit ha student
3) The American "bubble" is absurd to most of the rest of the world and would be considered rude
4) See 1
5) That's probably true, but the other 4 suck

Of course you've never been accused of sexual harassment, You've also never won teacher of the year.

It's sad that we dilute everything to the point of non-existence out of fear... sad sad sad.

I'm pretty sure the study was actually investigating "pedophilia" which the DSM-IV defines as "under 13".

I imagine if you expand that to 16 or 17, the number goes from 0.5% to about 95%. :-)

LOL, I just read it with less beer in my system and I see what you were doing. Need a +1 ActuallySarcasm tag.