No, no, *no*! Asimov wasn't an idiot. A bit tender-minded and prone
to the wishful fantasy that violence never solves anything, yes, but not an
idiot.
Asimov had read quite enough history to know that (a) almost all
swords have only *one* blade, and (b) many swords (including classic
designs such as katanas and scramasaxes) have only *one* edge. In
fact, he probably thought "one blade" was universally true, as did I
until I learned of an odd dingus called a Syrian fighting knife.
The actual quote (from the Foundation trilogy) was "It's a poor atom-blaster
that can't be pointed both ways" -- which turned out to be wrong even in the
context of the story, BTW. The good guys had personal shields, you see.
This brings me to the real point, which is: don't *ever* count on being
able to out-FUD Microsoft. They're far better and more practiced at it
than we are. Sure, the Yorktown fiasco makes a good icebreaker (I use
it in my public speeches a lot) but it is vital to follow that up with
a *positive* message about reliability and cost-of-ownership, rather than
just dissing Microsoft.
-- <a href="http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr">Eric S. Raymond</a>The following is a Python RSA implementation. According to the US Government posting these four lines makes me an international arms trafficker! Join me in civil disobedience; add these lines of code to your .sig block to help get this stupid and unconstitutional law changed. ============================================================================ from sys import*;from string import*;a=argv;[s,p,q]=filter(lambda x:x[:1]!= '-',a);d='-d'in a;e,n=atol(p,16),atol(q,16);l=(len(q)+1)/2;o,inb=l-d,l-1+d while s:s=stdin.read(inb);s and map(stdout.write,map(lambda i,b=pow(reduce( lambda x,y:(x<<8L)+y,map(ord,s)),e,n):chr(b>>8*i&255),range(o-1,-1,-1)))
"Taking my gun away because I might shoot someone is like cutting my tongue out because I might yell `Fire!' in a crowded theater." -- Peter Venetoklis
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