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11/18/09
Seams we are headed to the dark ages again. I'll keep all my P III processors, seams they can work fine for me.
^__^
11/18/09
you'd think being a brilliant scientist on the cutting edge of quantum physics/computing that will likely usher in a new era of exponential crunching power that will save millions of lives through protein simulation and genetic analysis would get you some, but no. for that you need $500 sunglasses, a disposition of imposing, brutish ignorance, a german car, and huge lats. also, you have to dance and pluck your eyebrows.
11/18/09
11/18/09
careful, that works on a bell curve.
im in san jose, where not only is the population 6:4 men to women, every other guy here is an engineer like myself - though usually better paid and with a college degree.
if i moved to alabama they'd herald me as a god damn genius. here in the valley, im just slightly under par.
11/18/09
NOW GET OFF MY LAWN.
11/18/09
Analysts refer to this phenomenon as "the circle of tech".
11/18/09
Apple will charge a kidney and a cornea for what is basically Linux.
Linux it's self will be compatible with more hardware only geeks use. But it will still get the best performance from the technology. Canonical will colour it all brown.
Microsoft will build a version that crashes constantly. Their EULA will also require your soul.
Google will re-brand the Linux version and use it to whore you to advertisers.
11/18/09
^__^
11/18/09
11/18/09
11/18/09
11/18/09
11/18/09
11/18/09
I mean, with every single password box, all you need to do is add a 1 second timer to it if someone types the wrong password, and that basically defeats all brute force attempts.
No one will complain that they have to wait 1 second between password attempts, and then computers can only throw out 1 guess/second, whereas current computers can do millions (billions?) of guesses/second.
It seems like an extremely simple solution to something that is a really big problem. Am I missing something really obvious, or did I just save everyone from disaster?
11/18/09
If you are able to intercept that data, you can try as many times as you want, as quickly as you want to decrypt it.
There's no time limit on this either, so if a government has been keeping a library of intercepted communications, as soon as new tools become available, they can unlock it.
11/18/09
But I'm sure there's some situations where password boxes could benefit from a small delay, just not nearly as many as I first thought.
11/18/09
11/18/09
If you want to keep data protected from prying eyes on its trip between the server and the client, you need to rely on encryption. The key used will be a randomly generated number and will always be different than the one used to log in.
11/18/09
11/18/09
I smell a new civil rights movement.
11/18/09
11/18/09
11/18/09
11/18/09
11/18/09
11/18/09
I am a little disappointed in the lack of giant switches.
08/20/09
08/20/09
Oh yeah, and Crysis freezes.
08/20/09
08/19/09
It's even been shown that for certain classes of problems, *emulating* quantum computing on a regular processor is faster.
As with most things - it's not an either/or situation, it's an also/and situation. Current technology (or some future analogy of it) will be with us for a LONG time.
08/19/09
Ordinary computers solve problems by breaking them down into tiny pieces and working on each piece one at a time. There is no problem they can't solve given enough time- bigger, harder problems just get turned into more pieces and take more time to finish.
Quantum computers, on the other hand, work best when you don't break down the problems. If you have a computer with enough qubits to describe the entire problem, then it can check every possible answer at the same time. This only works if the computer has enough qubits for the entire problem, but its a lot faster than trying each answer one-by-one.
For NP problems, this can mean the difference between being done in an instant versus waiting a few billion years. But for most problems, there are much better ways to solve them with ordinary computers, and quantum computers don't really offer a lot of advantage.
I expect when quantum computers start getting into the hundreds of reliable qubits, the government will take up an intense interest in the research and keeping it away from everybody else. Many billions will be spent so that the NSA can easily break everybody's codes, and nobody else can. Codebreaking is really the only obvious application for quantum computers under 100K qubits. After that breaks down and we get into the millions of qubits, certain major corporations will start getting one or two- Google for search algorithms, UPS for route planning (no, really), etc. Maybe someday (not in the next 25 years) we'll see them as secondary processors (a QPU?). I doubt if they will ever primary means of computation, though. For non-NP problems, they're just not worth the trouble.
08/19/09
08/19/09
My cats are wondering why quantum physics is so predisposed to locking felines in boxes with uranium atoms and poison gas.
08/19/09
i wonder if his cat survived, who could stand the curiosity of not knowing if his cat was alive or dead...
08/19/09
08/19/09
08/19/09