This Shirt Is A Weapon

Oops, no morning weigh-in...

Got the car last night, then went to physical therapy. Looks like that's winding down, not much more they can do for me... Home, computer, got an email that Art was in the house making some custom chili, so it was down to Which Brew for dinner. Nice night, nice crowd and really good "Italian chili" but I was back home pretty early. Late bedtime anyway, played with the computer until past midnight.

Bring back the crypto wars: So, I see that some researchers have succeeded in making a quantum byte, a major step towards the mythical quantum computer. Oh well, so much for computer security, that'll put a major hole through RSA and pretty much all current encryption schemes.

Once upon a time (early nineties), "hard encryption" was illegal to export from the USA: the technology was deemed a weapon and restricted for purposes of national security -- too bad it was laughably easy to implement, and everyone on Earth interested in the subject knew how to do it. Dudes used to make tee shirts in protest, with simple shell scripts implementing RSA and "this shirt is a weapon" written on them -- I've even seen a tattoo -- and photograph themselves overseas.

Now technological advances are threatening to undermine almost all "hard encryption," and I can't help but notice that this particular cutting-edge research did not happen in the USA. I also noticed that the cure for cancer will not be developed in the USA either, at least not if it depends on the work of the leading researchers, who are decamping to Singapore's Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology. Well, once the Third World is rich and we're poor, I sure hope they'll let bygones be bygones, and practice enlightened drug-pricing policies.

Speaking of drugs and the Third World, here's some good news: I see that the "triple-drug method" has been found to be as effective in managing AIDS in poor countries as it is in rich ones. It's a start...