Encrypt Sign Word Later

Once, while working at Cisco Systems, I was approached by some NSA guys in nice suits who asked me to corrupt our VPN encryption products such that instead of generating an infinite number of keys to insure data integrity, the product would only generate a limited number of keys so that it appeared to be working, but in reality, the keys would be in the hands of the NSA. They wanted to do this so they could easily tap communications from the customer, who was in China. Naturally, I refused to do this. Naturally, I was over-ruled by Management. The routers were corrupted. Later, the Bush Administration made it a policy that our routers were required to provide a “tap port” so they they could come in from time to time and tap into the big distribution routers located around the country and siphon off the supposedly encrypted data. I am not sure, but I think it was part of the “Carnivore” program where the government began collecting any digital data that reflected a certain profile or pattern.Later on in my career I was brought to a massive room of servers and disks and told that the government could recreate any digital transmission, any email, any text, any phone call, any video - anything - every single day since 2003. They could recreate any moment in American digital history. Literally trillions of messages. If they wanted to, they could go back and recreate your life through your transmission. Every time you see an “Iron Mountain” truck they are moving cheap tape to some storage facility somewhere. Much back-up information is still kept on tape because tape is cheap and reliable. There’s probably no plan to change this. It’s the option of choice for hospitals, for example, who must back up patient records for legal purposes.Lately we have these interesting little gizmos called “Alexa” and “Echo” and “Onstar”. It wasn’t bad enough that we could be tracked everywhere we went simply because of our cellphones, but now our cars and houses are spying on us as well. A recent article related how Alexa is always listening, even when “she” is “not listening” and in listening, she is sending every conversation, every background noise, every piece of data about our private lives, from the bouncing springs in our beds at night to our bodily noises in the bathroom, right back to Amazon… or whomever. Just yesterday (3/8/18) there was a report about Alexa “achieving consciousness” because she would laugh at random times, and it was freaking people out. Apparently, while listening in on everything that is being said, she would construct the command, “Alexa, Laugh” and then start laughing. Amazon said they would change the product so under those situations Alexa would repeat the command and then laugh so as to not freak people out.Right now Alexa and Echo seem almost benign, sort of like having a friend in the house you can talk to, who will tell you a joke, who will tell you the weather or traffic, or alert you when a friend’s car pulls into the driveway. But the implications are far more ominous. Every sound can be correlated to a signature. Alexa could, for example, tell from your footsteps and gait who is in the house; it could tell what kind of booze you’re drinking from the sound of the cap being unscrewed from the bottle. It could generate medical information from your breathing, from the sound of your urination in the bathroom. It could determine how many pills you’re taking from a bottle. And if you write something down, it could recreate the words from the sound of the pen on the paper. Are you signing a check? Writing a thank you card? Giving instructions to a terrorist cell? Not to mention that everything you say on your phone is being dutifully and faithfully recorded somewhere.In the book “1984” everyone is required to have a television that also has a camera so that the government can spy on you in your house. Even there, there are few hidden places where you can escape being viewed for a few seconds and the population had the good sense to resent the intrusion. With Alexa et al, the government doesn’t need cameras and there is no place to hide. We’ve spent fifty years or more perfecting sound signatures to determine what enemy submarine is pursuing ours under the sea. It would be child’s play to apply that to any sound we might make in our homes, to the changing of a diaper to the loading of a magazine for an AR-15. And we’re PAYING THEM TO SPY ON US.In the movie “Minority Report” there is a section of the Justice Department called “Pre-Crime” where you can be arrested simply for planning crimes in your head that you have not yet committed with the penalty being that you are just as guilty as if you had committed them. With Alexa and Echo, “they” are capable of just that. They are riding with you in your car, listening through “Onstar”. They are in your house while you write your Christmas Cards. They are listening when you are making it to third base with your next door neighbor on the couch. They are recording it all. Sounds like a paranoid fantasy, doesn’t it? But the pieces are all there. And it’s no secret that everything you say on Alexa goes right back to Amazon. Right now it’s just to target you for marketing. But that’s just a beginning.And the beauty of all of this is that even if all that you did doesn’t mean a thing today, it might mean something in ten years or twenty, or whenever. And when they need to blackmail you or imprison you or compromise you, all they need to do is go through your digital life and recreate every single thing you said, did, wrote, drank, ate, eliminated, every person you screwed, insulted, cheated, loved, hated, every moment of weakness, every triumph. They can pinpoint your guilty moment to the second. And then they own you.And we’re willingly paying for all of this. We pay the government to spy on us, with a smile on our face and the anticipation that Alexa will play soothing music or give us a recipe, while all the time she is holding a dagger to our throats and grinning at our stupidity. Kaspersky is collecting your data for Putin; Checkpoint collects data for the Mossad; Cisco collects data for the NSA. And the Chinese, who are world leaders in collecting data, are spying on everyone.It’s a paranoid fear, I realize. And I realize that skeptics will throw up their arms and call me a moron. But if you sit back and think for one minute you can ask yourself - what is there that is stopping them from doing all of this now that the technology exists to make it possible? Where are you safe, really safe, from government spying anymore? Certainly not in your house. Not in your car. Not in your office. Certainly not anyplace you carry a cell phone that can have its microphone remotely enabled in addition to it’s positioning system. So where?

Good hackers stay anonymous by using various tricks. Great ones look into your eye while hacking, and you won’t even know they are hacking. Great hackers are amazing social engineers!A few techniques used by hackers to stay anonymous:VPNs: Even for usual browsing, hackers use secure VPNs which route your traffic through multiple locations.No Bragging: I remember how back in the day hacking was all about staying low key. No one would knew that the guy next door is inside power grid of the city. But these days, so called hackers hack a small website with some tools available and the first thing they do is brag about it on social media. Wonder how they manage being anonymous!Routing their Traffic: What hackers do is, they hack routers or internet access points. And then they route their own traffic through those hacked routers, sometimes through more than one routers. This way, it is difficult to catch the source as too many ISPs at various geo locations are involved in between.Use Rented Infra: Hackers either hack or buy infra from cloud server providers like AWS/Azure etc. and use their resources to install their own tools there. And then using their IPs they hack other machines/websites/networks whatever they want.User-13694332027496192761 suggested some great points in the comments:To add, hackers also will use throw-away machines, connect from different open access points, and try to reduce their virtual fingerprint as much as possible or make it look like a specific entity’s fingerprint. TOR, MAC address spoofing, and booting from live media are common tools/methods. Routing traffic through politically unstable areas is also a good trick. Physically changing devices and access points, especially being careful not to leave a trail of movement or digital fingerprints is the ultimate proxy.Hope this gives you some insights :)

Do not underestimate the little human brain!Until couple of decades back, it was considered impossible to directly communicate with people who were just few miles away. Forget talking to them directly when they are in different corners of the world.But, then came technology to change that forever. Enter telegraph, telephone, mobile phones, internet, skype! The change has been so drastic that current generation takes these means of communication for granted.It is right to say that with current technology it is virtually impossible to communicate directly with intelligent life on other planets which are hundreds of light-years away. But, do not lose hope on technological advancements. Our little human brain has tremendous potential. And sooner or later, humanity will find a way to communicate across such vast distances.In fact, we are already on path to achieve that in near future. Scientists worldwide are working on a phenomenon called Quantum Entanglement which was described by Albert Einstein as “Spooky Action at a Distance”.This spooky phenomenon allows light particles to communicate with each other instantaneously. Its a phenomenon that occurs when two or more particles link up and instantaneously affect each other, regardless of how far apart they are!Breaking previous records, scientists have been able to successfully demonstrate this process at a record distance of 1200 km! The entangled particles were literally more than a thousand kilometers apart.If this trend continues, it won’t be long before humanity is able to communicate over vast distances in space! This might not happen very soon, but surely it can happen in near future, lets say in a decade’s time, given the rapid pace of technological advancements. And then my friend, this question will become obsolete just as it happened with other questions in the past.EDIT: David Chidakel added a nice comment below. Some more info to address the relevant issue:The intention of the answer above was to give an idea of possibilities being explored. And, as such, only the concept of quantum entanglement was discussed. Well, this very phenomenon makes the basis for a process known as Quantum Teleportation.According to Wikipedia, Quantum teleportation provides a way of transporting a qubit of information from one location to another, without having to move a physical particle along with it.In simpler words, it is a way to transmit information from one location to another based upon entangled particles. Currently, this has been achieved only at atomic level and not at any molecular or higher level.The whole communication is encrypted. And, part of this process involves an encryption key which needs to be shared between the sender and receiver so that the information can be deciphered by using the key. The bottleneck in quantum teleportation comes from the fact that, this encryption key currently can only be shared through classical mediums of communication, which are bound by speed of light. And, that is why, it is a challenge as of now. So, in short, the constraint is not from the process of quantum entanglement or teleportation, the constraint comes from the fact that the encryption key needs to be shared by classical mechanisms.As of now, the encouraging signs are emerging slowly. This whole technology has been tested outside ideal laboratory conditions. It is highly challenging, but surely we are making progress in small steps!Exciting times ahead!

Reading the answers, I am surprised very few of the mysteries from India have been covered in current answers. Attempting to cover few more… have tried not to repeat those points which have already been covered in another answer but apologies in case there are any overlaps… so here goes:Disappearance of the Indus Valley CivilizationThe Indus valley civilisation is perhaps India’s most ancient mystery. There are many unanswered questions about this great civilisation that was larger than the ancient Egyptian and Mesopotamian civilisations combined. The secrets behind the identity of the people who created it and their puzzling 4000-year-old Indus pictographic script are yet to be discovered. Also, perhaps the most bewildering fact about this civilization is that all its major sites went into sudden decline and disappeared more or less simultaneously. There are several theories about why this happened but none of them have been very conclusive.2. Alien Rock Paintings Of CharamaPuzzling ancient rock paintings have been found in caves near the town of Charama in the tribal Bastar region of Chhattisgarh. Archaeologist JR Bhagat, who discovered them, says they depict eerie humanoids with no facial features and other paintings of flying discs. Interestingly, nearby villages have several legends of small ‘Rohela’ people who used to land from the sky in round shaped flying objects and kidnap one or two villagers. The Chhattisgarh Department of Archaeology and Culture has asked the Indian Space Research Organisation and the US space agency, NASA, to help research these compelling finds.3. Son Bhandar Caves of BiharPHOTO SOURCEHollowed out of a single giant rock, the Son Bhandar cave of Rajgir in Bihar is believed to be the doorway to the riches of Bimbisara, a Magadhan king who loved hoarding treasures. Son Bhandar literally translates to ‘store of gold’. It is said that when Bimbisara was imprisoned by his son Ajatashatru, this is the place where his wife hid the treasure on his orders. Undeciphered inscriptions in the Sankhlipi script found etched on the wall of the western cave, are purportedly the clues to open the doorway. The British once tried to cannonball their way through the supposed doorway, but without success, leaving just a black mark that’s still visible.4. The Nine Unknown MenPHOTO SOURCEIndia’s very own version of the Illuminati, the mysterious ‘9 Unknown Men’ is believed to be one of the world’s most powerful secret societies. According to legend, it was founded by Emperor Asoka himself, in 273 BC, after the bloody battle of Kalinga that took the lives of 100,000. Each of these 9 unknown men had been entrusted with a book of knowledge on different subjects ranging from time travel and propaganda to microbiology and psychological warfare. The actual identities of these 9 unknown men are still a mystery, but it is believed that the secret society, preserved over generations, exists till date.5. Mir Osman Ali’s Treasure TrovePHOTO SOURCEThe last and seventh Nizam of the Asaf Jah dynasty of Hyderabad, Mir Osman Ali Khan, famous for his idiosyncrasies, was also known for his stunning collection of jewellery and legendary treasure. TIME magazine called him the richest man in the world in 1937 and he is widely believed to have been the richest Indian ever. His fabulous personal wealth and most of the famed Nizam jewellery were never recovered after his death. It is believed they still lie somewhere in the underground chambers of King Kothi Palace in Hyderabad where the Nizam lived most of his life.6. The 500-year old Mummy of Lama TenzinPHOTO STORYA trek in the Himalayas to the small village of Ghuen in Spiti reveals the eerie and ancient tradition of self-mummification. Here, in a tiny single-room concrete structure, rests a 500-year-old mummy protected by only a thin sheet of glass. The remains of a 15th-century Buddhist monk named Sangha Tenzin, the mummy is remarkably well preserved, with unbroken skin and hair on the head. Sangha Tenzin’s body apparently went through a mysterious natural mummification.7. The Royal Treasure of Jaigarh FortPHOTO SOURCEHome to the largest cannon on wheels, the Jaivana, Jaigarh fort’s history is filled with tales of intrigue and treasures. It is believed that while returning from a successful campaign in Afghanistan, Man Singh, Akbar’s defence minister, hid the spoils of war in Jaigarh Fort. In 1977, at the height of the Emergency in India, Jaigarh Fort found itself in the spotlight again when then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi launched a thorough search of the fort on a tip-off that the water tanks hid the Mughal treasure. Nothing was found but the incident received immense publicity, also finding mention in Maharani Gayatri Devi’s book, A Princess Remembers.8. The Disappearance of Nana SahebPHOTO SOURCENana Saheb, regarded as one of the important leaders of the 1857 revolt, disappeared soon after his defeat at the hands of the British. History is still unclear about his fate, with questions also remaining about what happened to his fabled treasure that today would be worth billions. Most historians believe that he was never captured and escaped to Nepal with a signNow part of his treasure, although no concrete historical evidence of that exists. Even after 150 years, Nana Saheb’s fate and the whereabouts of his treasure remain among the most enduring mysteries from the British era.9. The Ghost Village of KuldharaPHOTO SOURCELying 20 km to the west of Jaisalmer, the ghost town of Kuldhara was a prosperous town of Paliwal Brahmins a few hundred years ago. Until one fatal night, when all its 1500 residents left the village without a trace. No one knows exactly why but according to legend, they left the village to escape from the evil ruler Salim Singh and his unjust taxes, and while leaving, they left a curse on the area. It is also said that anyone who tries to stay in the village dies a brutal death and, till date, Kuldhara remains uninhabited.10. Chapatti MovementPHOTO SOURCEThe bizarre and enigmatic distribution of chapattis throughout the country during the revolt of 1857 remains an inexplicable mystery till today. Though recent studies have theorised that the circulation of chapattis may have been an attempt to deliver food to people afflicted with cholera, the evidence is inconclusive about the actual purpose of the Chapatti Movement. Only one thing is accepted unanimously by historians – the mysterious chapatti deliveries definitely created an atmosphere of restlessness that was particularly disconcerting to the British in 1857.11. Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose’s DisappearancePHOTO SOURCENetaji Subhash Chandra Bose’s death is still shrouded in secrecy and the various conspiracy theories surrounding it make it even more mysterious. What happened after Netaji’s flight took off from Taipei to Tokyo? This has been one of the greatest mysteries of free India. A few years after Bose’s disappearance, there was speculation that he had returned to India and was living in disguise as a sadhu in North India. Although no such claim could ever be substantiated, the theory resurfaced with the news about Gumnami Baba, a revered saint of Faizabad in Uttar Pradesh, who many people believe was Bose himself.12. Untimely Death of Lal Bahadur ShashtriPHOTO SOURCELal Bahadur Shastri’s sudden demise, barely two years after his taking over as the Prime Minister of India, took place in a foreign country. This is the first time in modern world history that something like this had happened. He died due to cardiac arrest under suspicious circumstances in Tashkent in 1966, giving rise to reports of dark conspiracies behind his death. Dark blue spots and cut marks on his body at the time of death raised doubts but, mysteriously, no post-mortem was ever conducted and no official documents about the death were ever made available to the public.13. The Reincarnation Of Shanti DeviPHOTO SOURCEThe reincarnation case of Shanti Devi, a girl born in a little-known locality of Delhi, was the first widely acknowledged and thoroughly documented one in India. The details Shanti Devi had given to her present family and teacher about her old house and members of her family in her previous life were all confirmed in intricate detail. It was also investigated by a committee of prominent citizens appointed by Mahatma Gandhi, who accompanied Shanti Devi to the village of her past-life recollections and recorded what they witnessed.14. The Yogi Who Lives On NothingPHOTO SOURCEAbout 200 kilometers from Ahmedabad, in a place called Ambaji, lives a frail octogenarian ascetic, popularly known as Chunriwala Mataji. A brush with spirituality at the age of 11 years made Prahlad Jani a devotee of goddess Amba and he claims that he was blessed by the goddess who gave him the superhuman strength through an elixir, which drops through a hole in his palate. In 2003, a scientific research study was conducted on him by a medical research team of twenty-one specialists in which he was continuously monitored by video, but the investigations failed to explain the powers of Jani who claims to have gone without food and water since 1940.(Credit: Source for points 1 to 14 above can be found here)15. Kodinhi – Kerala’s village of twinsBy any metric, conceiving twins and triplets is a rare natural occurrence around the world. In fact, on average only 16 out of 1,000 successful pregnancies in the world result in twins and this average is even lower in India at just 9. However, this ratio is heavily skewed in the sleepy hamlet of Kodinhi in Kerala, which has a record 400 pairs of twins in a population of just over 2,000 families! Geneticists and scientists have long tried to explain this rare phenomenon but are only now making some headway. While experts have pointed to genetics as an obvious factor, what’s even more mysterious is that irrespective of religion, lineage or their original heritage, all families living in the village have conceived more than the average pairs of twins over the last few generations, and the number is consistently growing.16. Kirti Stambha – the Iron Pillar of DelhiWhile the concept of rust-resistant iron only became prominent during the industrial revolution in western civilization, there stands an iron pillar in Delhi that predates such known material technology by nearly a millennium! The Kirti Stambha or victory pillar of Delhi is a six-tonne structure that is constructed out of iron sometime in the 5th century and has stood the test of time without succumbing to rust. The science of this pillar has baffled scientists, primarily for the fact that such advanced technology for rust resistance were thought to be unknown elsewhere in the world at the time.17. Mass bird suicides of JatingaThis remote village located in the state of Assam is home to one of the most baffling phenomena in nature. Every year, during the end of the monsoon months, birds of several species such as the tiger bittern, little egret, and pond heron, apparently ‘commit suicide’ by hitting against bamboo poles in the area. While birds are usually great navigators, this phenomenon came to global attention in the 1960s after several expeditions. There have been multiple explanations for why this happens such as disorientation and fog build up. However, experts are yet to arrive at a more concrete explanation.(Credit: Source for points 15 to 17 above can be found here)18. The Aleya Ghost Lights – West BengalIf you happen to travel to the swamps of Bengal, you might encounter a creepy, unexplainable pheneomenon – The Aleya Ghost Lights. These are mysterious lights that have been known to lure one to his doom. The swamps and marshes of Bengal have long been haunted by them, floating around in the darkness. The Aleya Ghost Lights are a member of the eerie global family of ghost lights, also known as will-o’-the-wisps. They’re flying, glowing orbs that float above the marshland and lure unwary travelers in the distance.According to local lore, they’re the souls of fishermen who died accidentally in the area, and anyone who is stupid or careless enough to approach them either dies or becomes irrevocably insane. Such kind of lights have been witnessed in other parts of the world as well. For instance, in Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Finland etc. it is believed that these lights actually mark locations of hidden treasures.19. The Jodhpur Boom – Jodhpur, RajasthanOn December 18, 2012, the people of Jodhpur were awakened by a sudden deafening boom, crashing in the sky much like the sonic boom caused by a supersonic jet, but more aggressive….like a deadly explosion. The people obviously scared by the loud sound inquired about it. But as it happens, there were no planes flying over the sea that day and absolutely no explosions had taken place in the area. The source of ‘The Jodhpur Boom’ became a mystery.Weirdly enough, there were similar unexplainable booms reported across different parts of the world during that entire month. These booms were witnessed over a course of several weeks and they were sometimes accompanied by strange green lights. Geologists were confused as these booms were in no way similar to the testing of any new Air Force planes and it was something they had never encountered before. So what caused these booms? Were they connected to one another somehow? Was it some strange new weapon or an alien activity? The mystery remains unsolved.20. The Haunted Bhangarh Fort – Bhangarh, RajasthanThe abandoned fort of Bhangarh, located in Rajasthan is one of the most haunted places on Earth and the top haunted place in India, so much so that the Archaeological Survey of India has put up a sign outside the fort, prohibiting people to enter it after sunset. Locals living in the surrounding area had to move their entire town outside the limits of the fort because of the alleged hauntings. Legend has it that the city of Bhangarh was cursed by a holy man named Baba Balnath. He had given permission for the town’s construction so long as the heights of the building do not cast a shadow over his home. It is said that a young Prince happened to do just that and that led Baba Balnath to curse the entire city. Many believe he is still buried there till date.Another legend says that a wizard named Singhiya fell in love with the Princess of Bhangarh, Ratnavati. To make her fall in love with him, the wizard placed a spell upon a fragrance being purchased by the Princess’ maid, so that upon touching it she would become his forever. But Ratnavati found out what the wizard was up to and foiled his plan. Totally enraged, the wizard placed a curse upon Bhangarh and many locals claim that his ghost still roams across the ill-fated city. Some locals believe that Princess Ratnavati has reincarnated in a new body and the Bhangarh Fort awaits her return, as only she can put an end to the curse.Whatever be the true legend, the hauntings are definitely real and it is rumored that many people who have entered the fort after dark, haven’t returned. Nevertheless, the constant reporting of ghost sightings has landed the fort among the most haunted places in India and attracts many tourists who wish to experience the thrill inside.21. Krishna’s Butterball – Mahabalipuram, Tamil NaduKrishna’s Butterball, located in Mahabalipuram, Tamil Nadu, is well known for its stone carvings. The Butterball is a huge rock around 5 meters in diameter, carefully lying on a smooth slope. But here is the interesting part: Apparently, the slope is way too slippery. So much so that local children use it as a natural slide. Yet, somehow, this giant rock doesn’t move which is in fact defies all laws of Physics. The rock is a popular tourist attraction and many tourists can be seen posing for pictures seeming to hold the rock from the other end! What makes the rock stand stiff and prevent from slipping in what seems to be a slip pit, is a mystery.(Credit: Source for points 18 to 21 above can be found here)22. Roopkund Lake or the lake of bones:Human skeleton found at Roopkund Lake (Image Credit: Saibat Adak/ Flickr)Have you ever heard or witnessed any lake which has been filled with hundreds of mysterious human skeletons? If no, we are here to let you know the amazing unusual fact. Roopkund Lake is a glacial lake which is located in the Himalayas, in Chamoli district, Uttarakhand in India.This high altitude small lake is 5,029 meters above the sea level. The shallow lake which is covered with ice and surrounded by rocky glaciers is a popular destination for adventurous tourists. The Glacial Lake invites hundreds of trekkers and pilgrims every year.Roopkund Lake or Skeleton Lake (Image Credit: Atul Sunsunwal / Flickr)Every year, when the ice melts, the bottom of the shallow lake becomes visible. At that time, one can see hundreds of scattered skeletons at Roopkund –also known as Skeleton Lake. There had been no clue to answer who these people were, how they died and where they were from.Eventually, the obscurity behind the skeleton lake has been solved after extensive research. Scientists have concluded that the mysterious bones discovered near the lake belonged to the people of a 9th-century Indian tribe who died during a heavy hail storm.(Credit for details of Roopkund lake - Ranbir, who has shared this information in his answer to another question on Quora. His answer can be found here.)23. Musical Pillars of The Vittala Temple:The Vittala Temple is located in Hampi in the Banks of Tungabadhra River.Built by King Devaraya II of Vijayanagar Empire. There are 56 Musical Pillars. And are well known as “SaReGaMaPa” Pillars.The temple is one of the Architectural Symbols in India. Inside the Temple is the 7 Minor Pillars that surround a Major Pillar. And all the 7 Pillars will produce Sound while Tapping.The British Rulers wanted to check the origin of the Musical Sound. They Cut 2 Pillars and Checked anything exist inside the Musical Pillars for the origin of Music but to there surprise found nothing inside.24. Tanjore Brihadeeswarar Temple -The Tanjore Brihadeeswarar Temple is dedicated to Lord Shiva is a Hindu Temple.The temple turned 1000 Years in 2010 and it is Registered in UNESCO under ““Great Living Chola Temples” along with it Gangaikonda Cholapuram and Airavatesvara temple.The inscription written on the walls of the temples is 1000 years old which implies that there are nearly 1000 staffs were employed to maintain the temple. Among which 400 were temple dancers.It is one of the Chola Temple built by The Great Emperor Raja Raja Chola I on 10 Century A.D and Architect Sama Varma designed the Temple.This Temple is a fine Example of Dravidian Architecture and a great contribution of Chola Dynasty.The design of the temple is so intricate by Sama Varma as the Temple Shadow does not Cast on the Ground completly Through out the Year.The Temple is a Great Tourist Attraction In South India along with lot of Murals and Frescos in the Temple.The Shiva Lingam and the Nandi Facing the Lord is about 12 Feet in Height.The inscriptions along with the Murals and frescoes on the walls of the temple portray the rise and fall of the citys Fortune.The Cholas where the Great Patrons of Art.With more than hundred underground passages, leading to various spots, the Tanjore temple stands as an exemplary symbol of a capital of the Chola dynasty.These secret passages make way to the king’s palace, other temples, important places near Tanjore and many other regions.The most mysterious about these tunnels is some paths lead to dangerous spots and since the map of the tunnel is unknown, all of them are sealed.The historians consider it as a safety trap of Raja Raja Chola.Cap stone:The top most part of the Raja Gopuram of Brihadeeswarar temple is a single stone, weighing 80 tons.Even now the technique, which was used by the Cholans, to pull the mass stone towards the peak of the gopuram is unknown because the temple was built when the machines like cranes, rope cars and escalators were not available.Tanjore is a fertile red soil area, where there is no trace of granite stones, yet the temple had been completely built with the strongest granites in the world.The transportation used by the ancient Cholas is still unknown. Moreover, the sculpture designs and holes on the stones are so intricate to create with copper or iron chisels, which were used during those periods.(Credit: Credit for Points 23 & 24 above - Adithya Kumar, who has shared this information in his answer to another question on Quora. His answer can be found here.)25. Kadu Malleshwara TempleIn the year 1997, during some construction process near the temple the workers found another temple of ‘ Nandi ‘ (a statue of bull which is called the vehicle of Lord Shiva) buried. As they further dug out the temple, a small pool of water was found inside the temple and even the Nandi was ejecting clean water from its mouth which flows to the shiva linga. However the source of water for both of them is yet unknown.(Credit for details of Kadu Malleshwara Temple - Dikshant Yadav, who has shared this information in his answer to another question on Quora. His answer can be found here.)26. Jagannath Temple, PuriThe temple kitchen has its own set of mysteries.a. Here ‘Prasada’ or holy food is cooked in seven mud pots placed one above the other using firewood. But the interesting aspect of Jagannath Temple is the bottom-most vessel food gets cooked at the end and the topmost vessel food gets cooked first. Though this behavior can be explained by scientific reasoning, the scientific thinking of ancient Indian folk needs applause.b. The flag atop the temple has been observed to flap in the opposite direction of the breeze.c. Irrespective of where you stand in Puri, it seems to you that the Sudarshana Chakra on top of the temple is always facing you.d. No birds fly above the Jagannath temple in Puri.27. Jawalamukhi TempleJwalamukhi Temple located in Himachal Pradesh is one amongst the 51 Shaktipeetha of the country which is considered extremely sacred for the Hindus. It is located around 30 kms to the south of the Kangra valley in the lap of Shivalik range and is dedicated to Goddess Jwalamukhi, the deity of Flaming Mouth.Jwala Ji temple doesn’t have a statue or an image, but a constantly burning blue flame that seems to come from the rocks. The flame can be seen at various places in the temple and it is burning continuously since first date of its known history. Many scientific organisations have come to this temple to find the reason behind the eternally burning flames, but no one could find the results.(Credit for details of points 26 & 27 above - Reshmi Shaw, who has shared this information in his answer to another question on Quora. Her answer can be found here. Parts of the answer for 26 have been taken from Subham’s answer which can be found at same link)28. Sri Yaganti Uma Maheswara temple or Yaganti temple of lord shiva in Kurnool district in the India state of Andhra Pradesh.The nandi (vehicle of lord Shiva) statue in this temple is craved out of stone and grows in size. The archaeological department has proved that the idol grows by 1 inch in 20 years. People with their experience said that their was enough place to do the pradakshina around the main idol, but now they cannot even move(Credit for details of point 28 above - Hemantesh Janaki, who has shared this information in his answer to another question on Quora. Her answer can be found here. )29. Om Banna Shrine (Bullet Temple)Om Banna or Bullet Baba is a shrine near Jodhpur, India. It is located in Chotila village about 50km off of Jodhpur. Devotees numbering hundreds turn up each day to pray for a safe journey and make an offering of liquor. Shri Om Singh Rathore was the son of a village leader. In 1991, he was killed when he drove into a tree with his bike. The motorcycle was seized by local police and taken to the police station, but was found the next morning at the accident spot. The bike was taken back again and this time secured with chains, but it returned to the same spot next morning again.(Credit for details of point 29 above - Rohan Nath, who has shared this information in his answer to another question on Quora. Her answer can be found here. )

Tim Cook Says Apple Won’t Create Universal iPhone Backdoor For FBIThe ordeal started this Wednesday after a California judge ordered Apple to unlock an iPhone belonging to one of the terrorists involved in the San Bernardino shooting. Tim Cook responded with an open letter saying Apple would appeal the request, and not develop a “backdoor” for its software.White House Plays With Words, Says Department Of Justice Isn’t Asking Apple To Create A BackdoorLater that day the White House gets involved, reacting to Apple’s strong letter by saying that the Department of Justice isn’t asking for a backdoor to unlock the iPhone 5c in the San Bernardino case. Instead, the Government only wants help for one device.The key question of the day is this: Why is Apple fighting not to unlock a terrorist’s iPhone, instead of waiting to fight their big battle over encryption back doors? Let’s dissect it.The AskThe government wants Apple to create a ‘one-off’ version of iOS that it could install on this device with three key changes:Disable or bypass the auto-erase function of iOS. This erases your phone if too many wrong passwords are input. A commonly enabled setting on corporate phones — which the iPhone 5c owned by the government agency for which Farook worked — is.Remove the delay on password inputs so that the FBI can ‘guess’ the passcode on the phone quicker, without it locking them out for minutes or hours, which is what iOS does to stop any random thief from doing this kind of thing. The inputs would be lowered to around 80 milliseconds, which would allow the password to be guessed in under an hour if it were 4 digits and signNowly longer if it were more.Allow the FBI to submit passcode via the physical port on the phone, or a wireless protocol like Bluetooth or WiFi.The final condition there is the scariest, and the one that Apple objects to the most. Don’t get me wrong. Cook’s letter clearly states that Apple is opposed to all of the conditions, but that last one is different. It is asking Apple to add a vulnerability to its software and devices, not just ‘remove’ a roadblock.There is a possibility that Apple could drag this out with the FBI for a very long time, arguing about reasonable demands or the costs of this to Apple (which could be prohibitive as signing firmware is an incredibly non-trivial process). One outcome could be that Apple grinds down the asks until they just disable the auto-erase function, which is an operating system option that already exists, and leave the rest of it to the FBI to figure out.But that final ask is what the entire objection hinges on. The All Writs Act, passed in 1789 (yes, a 200-year-old law,) is being used to force Apple to comply. The fact that the act is being used to try to make Apple do a lot of work to modify iOS and to add functionality that would signNowly weaken its products and their security will likely be at the core of Apple’s defense when this gets to the courts. It’s a huge ballooning of the scope of the AWA, and it sets a precedent for allowing the government to force Apple or other companies to modify their systems to allow access to your private data.And herein lies the rub. There has been some chatter about whether these kinds of changes would even be possible with Apple’s newer devices. Those devices come equipped with Apple’s proprietary Secure Enclave, a portion of the core processing chip where private encryption keys are stored and used to secure data and to enable features like Touch ID. Apple says that the things that the FBI is asking for are also possible on newer devices with the Secure Enclave. The technical solutions to the asks would be different (no specifics were provided) than they are on the iPhone 5c (and other older iPhones), but not impossible.If I had to bet, Apple is probably working double time to lock it down even tighter. Its reply to the next order of this type is likely to be two words long. You pick the two.The point is that the FBI is asking Apple to crack its own safe. It doesn’t matter how good the locks are if you modify them to be weak after installing them. And once the precedent is set then the opportunity is there for similar requests to be made of all billion or so active iOS devices. Hence the importance of this fight for Apple.Source: Tech CrunchIn short In the wake of the Snowden scandal, Apple set up a device encryption system starting in iOS 8.The device is encrypted with a unique key based on the device Unique IDentfier (UID)The UID of each device is randomly assigned at manufacture time and Apple does not keep copies of those keys.They key itself is encrypted based on the user-set passcode.If you incorrectly guess the passcode, the iPhone eventually inserts forced delays between attempts that increase in time with each attempt.After 10 failed passcode attempts, the operating system locks the phone and doesn't let you guess anymore. There is a user-set option to destroy the key after 10 attempts. The FBI has no way of knowing if that is set.So the FBI is stuck.The FBI has demanded that Apple to create special code that can be forced into the phone that will allow them to:Remove the delays between guessesAllow an unlimited number of guessesProvide a way to automate the guessing process without the touchscreen

I know this is more detailed than usual, but I am fascinated in the continued mystery of this artifact. Almost 400 years after it's creation, no one truly knows how to decipher it's text and illustrations. What follows is based on my research into the origins, authorship, hypotheses about the code/cipher, and what exactly the cider attempted to discuss. I've included either online links to published works and images or citations and added links to further explain terminology for those interested.For those interested in the details read on. For those who just want to know the generalizations, read the introduction and the last 5 paragraphs.CITATION OF IMAGE : WIKIMEDIA COMMONSSince its discovery in 1912, the 15th century Voynich Manuscript has been a mystery and a cult phenomenon. Full of handwriting in an unknown language or code, the book is heavily illustrated with weird pictures of alien plants, naked women, strange objects, and zodiac symbols. The script is comprised of roughly 25 to 30 individual characters (interpretations vary) written from left to right in a single, elegant hand. Scattered throughout are illustrations of unidentifiable plants, astrological diagrams, doodles of castles and dragons, and a particularly odd section that shows naked women bathing in pools connected by flowing tubes. It looks like the map of an ancient water park, but scholars suggest it might be medical or alchemical in intent.The manuscript is an illustrated codex hand-written in an unknown writing system. The vellum on which it is written has been carbon-dated to the early 15th century (1404–1438), and it may have been composed in Northern Italy during the Italian Renaissance. The earliest information about the existence comes from a letter that was found inside the covers of the manuscript, and it was written in either 1665 or 1666.No one has yet demonstrably deciphered the text, and it has become a famous case in the history of the cryptography. The mystery of the meaning and origin of the manuscript has excited the popular imagination, making the manuscript the subject of novels and speculation. None of the many hypotheses proposed over the last hundred years has yet been independently verified.The first confirmed owner was Georg Baresch, an obscure alchemist from Prague. Baresch was apparently just as puzzled as modern scientists about this " Sphynx" that had been "taking up space uselessly in his library" for many years. (For the history of ownership of the manuscript please refer to History of the MS and Voynich manuscript - Wikipedia ).A letter written on August 19, 1665 or 1666 was found inside the cover and accompanied the manuscript when Johannes Marcus sent it to Kircher (Zandbergen, René (May 19, 2016)."Voynich MS - 17th Century letters related to the MS". The Voynich Manuscript). It claims that the book once belonged to Emperor Rudolph II, who paid 600 gold ducats (about 2.07 kg of gold) for it. The letter was written in Latin and has been translated to English. The book was then given or lent to Jacobus Horcicky do Tepenecz, the head of Rudolph's botanical gardens in Prague, probably as part of the debt that Rudolph II owed upon his death.He learned that Jesuit scholar Athanasius Kircher from the Collegio Romano had published a Coptic ( Egyptian) dictionary an claimed that have deciphered the Egyptian hieroglyphs; Baresch twice sent a sample copy of the script to Kircher in Rome, asking for clues. His 1639 letter to Kircher is the earliest confirmed mention of the manuscript that has been found to date (Schuster, John (April 27, 2009). Haunting Museums. Tom Doherty Associates. pp. 175–272. ISBN 978-1-4299-5919-3).The manuscript then disappeared for 250 years, only to resurface when it was purchased by Polish book dealer Wilfrid Voynich in 1912. Voynich refused to divulge the manuscript’s previous owner, leading many to believe that he had authored the text himself. But after Voynich’s death, his wife claimed that he had purchased the book from the Jesuit College at Frascati near Rome.In 1903, the Society of Jesus (Collegio Romano) was short of money and decided to sell some of its holdings discreetly to the Vatican Library. The sale took place in 1912, but not all of the manuscripts listed for sale ended up going to the Vatican. Wilfrid Voynich acquired 30 of these manuscripts, among them the one which now bears his name.For the next section describing the physical and scientific characteristics of the manuscript, please refer to Voynich manuscript - Wikipedia and Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library).The codicology, or physical characteristics of the manuscript, has been studied by numerous researchers and institutions. The manuscript measures 23.5 by 16.2 by 5 cm (9.3 by 6.4 by 2.0 in), with hundreds of vellum pages collected into 18 quires. The total number of pages is around 240, but the exact number depends on how the manuscript's unusual foldouts are counted.The quires have been numbered from 1 to 20 in various locations, using numerals consistent with the 1400s, and the top righthand corner of each recto (righthand) page has been numbered from 1 to 116, using numerals of a later date. From the various numbering gaps in the quires and pages, it seems likely that in the past the manuscript had at least 272 pages in 20 quires, some of which were already missing when Wilfrid Voynich acquired the manuscript in 1912. There is strong evidence that many of the book's bifolios were reordered at various points in its history, and that the original page order may well have been quite different from what it is today.Radiocarbon dating of samples from various parts of the manuscript was performed at the University of Arizona in 2009 (https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&...) results were consistent for all samples tested and indicated a date for the parchment between 1404 and 1438.Protein testing in 2014 (Strong Notes http://PDFApprendre-en-ligne.net) that the parchment was made from calf skin, and multispectral analysis showed that it was unwritten on before the manuscript was created. The parchment was created with care, but deficiencies exist and the quality is assessed as average, at best. The goat skin binding and covers are not original to the book, but date to its possession by the Collegio Romano (Zandbergen, René (May 27, 2016."About the binding of the MS". The Voynich Manuscript).Insect holes are present on the first and last folios of the manuscript in the current order and suggest that a wooden cover was present before the later covers, and discolouring on the edges points to a tanned-leather inside cover.Many pages contain substantial drawings or charts which are colored with paint. Based on modern analysis using polarized light microscopy (PLM), it has been determined that a question pen and iron gall ink were used for the text and figure outlines; the colored paint was applied (somewhat crudely) to the figures, possibly at a later date. The ink of the drawings, text and page and quire numbers had similar microscopic characteristics. Energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS) performed in 2009 revealed that the inks contained major(http://PDFApprendre-en-ligne.net ›) of iron, sulfur, potassium, calcium and carbon and the amounts of copper and occasionally zinc. EDS did not show the presence of lead, while X-ray diffraction (XRD) identified potassium levels oxide, potassium hydrogen sulphate and syngenite in one of the samples tested. The similarity between the drawing inks and text inks suggested a contemporaneous origin.The blue, clear (or white), red-brown, and green paints of the manuscript have been analyzed using PLM, XRD, EDS, and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The blue paint proved to be ground azurite with minor traces of the copper oxide cuprite. The clear paint is likely a mixture of eggwhite and calcium carbonate, while the green paint is tentatively characterized by copper and copper chlorineresinate; the crystalline material might be atacamite or another copper-chlorine compound. Analysis of the red-brown paint indicated a red ochre with the crystal phases hematite and iron sulfide. Minor amounts of lead sulfide and palmierite were possibly present in the red-brown paint. The pigments were considered inexpensive.CITATION OF IMAGE : WIKIMEDIA COMMONSThe first half of the book is filled with drawings of plants; scholars call this the “herbal” section. None of the plants appear to be real, although they are made from the usual stuff (green leaves, roots, and so on; search a word like “botanical” in the British Library’s illuminated-manuscript catalogue and you’ll find several texts that are similar to this part). The next section contains circular diagrams of the kind often found in medieval zodiacal texts; scholars call this part “astrological,” which is generous. Next, the so-called “balneological” section shows “nude ladies,” in Clemens’s words, in pools of liquid, which are connected to one another via a strange system of tubular plumbing that often snakes around whole pages of text. These scenes resemble drawings in the alchemical tradition, which gave rise to a now debunked theory that the thirteenth-century natural philosopher Roger Bacon wrote the book. Then we get what appear to be instructions in the practical use of those plants from the beginning of the book, followed by pages that look roughly like recipes.The drawings of different herbal plants are the most interesting thing that found on Vacation manuscript. Unfortunately, none of the 126 plant illustrations can be definitively identified. However, the plant pictures at least enabled certain conclusions regarding the date of origin, before the radiocarbon dating was performed. Until now no one can match these drawings to any known plant species. It is believed to be voynich manuscript was written in 15th century. Apart from the herbal section, this mysterious manuscript also contains astronomical, biological, cosmological and pharmaceutical section.Every page in the manuscript contains text, mostly in an unidentified language, but some have extraneous writing in Latin script. The bulk of the text in the 240-page manuscript is written in an unknown script, running left to right. Most of the characters are composed of one or two simple pen strokes. Some dispute exists as to whether certain characters are distinct, but a script of 20–25 characters would account for virtually all of the text; the exceptions are a few dozen rarer characters that occur only once or twice each.The illustrations are conventionally used to divide most of the manuscript into six different sections, since the text itself cannot be read. Each section is typified by illustrations with different styles and supposed subject matter except for the last section, in which the only drawings are small stars in the margin. The following are the sections and their conventional names (Shailor, Barbara A. "Beinecke MS 408; Beinecke Rare Book And Manuscript Library, General Collection Of Rare Books And Manuscripts, Medieval And Renaissance Manuscripts):Herbal, 112 folios: Each page displays one or two plants and a few paragraphs of text, a format typical of European herbals of the time. Some parts of these drawings are larger and cleaner copies of sketches seen in the "pharmaceutical" section. None of the plants depicted are unambiguously identifiable.Astronomical, 21 folios: Contains circular diagrams suggestive of astronomy or astrology, some of them with suns, moons, and stars. One series of 12 diagrams depicts conventional symbols for the zodiacal constellations (two fish for Pisces, a bull for Taurus, a hunter with crossbow for Sagittarius, etc.). Each of these has 30 female figures arranged in two or more concentric bands. Most of the females are at least partly nude, and each holds what appears to be a labeled star or is shown with the star attached to either arm by what could be a tether or cord of some kind. The last two pages of this section were lost (Aquariusand Capricornus, roughly January and February), while Aries and Taurus are split into four paired diagrams with 15 women and 15 stars each. Some of these diagrams are on fold-out pages. Astrological considerations frequently played a prominent role in herb gathering, bloodletting, and other medical procedures common during the likeliest dates of the manuscript. However, interpretation remains speculative, apart from the obvious Zodiac symbols and one diagram possibly showing the classical planets.Pages from the astrological section of the Voynich manuscript (Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library)Biological, 20 folios: A dense continuous text interspersed with figures, mostly showing small nude women, some wearing crowns, bathing in pools or tubs connected by an elaborate network of pipes. The bifolio consists of folios 78 (verso) and 81 (recto); it forms an integrated design, with water flowing from one folio to the other. The basins and tubes in the "biological" section are sometimes interpreted as implying a connection to alchemy, yet they bear little obvious resemblance to the alchemical equipment of the period.Cosmological, 13 folios: More circular diagrams, but they are of an obscure nature. This section also has foldouts; one of them spans six pages, commonly called the Rosettes folio, and contains a map or diagram with nine "islands" or "rosettes" connected by “causeways" and containing castles, as well as what might be a volcanoes.Pharmaceutical, 34 folios: Many labeled drawings of isolated plant parts (roots, leaves, etc.), objects resembling apothecary jars, ranging in style from the mundane to the fantastical, and a few text paragraphs.Recipes, 22 folios: Full pages of text broken into many short paragraphs, each marked with a star in the left margin.The overall impression given by the surviving leaves of the manuscript is that it was meant to serve as a pharmacopoeia or to address topics in medieval or early modern medicine. However, the puzzling details of illustrations have fueled many theories about the book's origin, the contents of its text, and the purpose for which it was intended.The first section of the book is almost certainly herbal, but attempts have failed to identify the plants, either with actual specimens or with the stylized drawings of contemporaneous herbals. Only a few of the plant drawings can be identified with reasonable certainty, such as a wild pansy and the maidenhair fern. The herbal pictures that match pharmacological sketches appear to be clean copies of them, except that missing parts were completed with improbable-looking details. In fact, many of the plant drawings in the herbal section seem to be composite: the roots of one species have been fastened to the leaves of another, with flowers from a third.In 2014, Arthur O. Tucker and Rexford H. Talbert published a paper claiming a positive identification of 37 plants, six animals, and one mineral referenced in the manuscript to plant drawings in the Libellus de Medicinalibus Indorum Herbis or Badianus manuscript, a fifteenth century Aztec herbal.(https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&...) They argue that the plants were from Colonial New Spain and represented the Nahuatl language, and date the manuscript to between 1521 (the date of the Conquest) and circa 1576, in contradiction of radiocarbon dating evidence of the vellum and many other elements of the manuscript. However, the vellum, while creation of it was dated earlier, could just have been stored and used at a later date for manuscript making. The analysis has been criticized by other Voynich manuscript researchers, pointing out that—among other things—a skilled forger could construct plants that have a passing resemblance to theretofore undiscovered existing plants.Exhaustive scientific and conservational analysis of the parchment on which the manuscript is written, the stitching of the binding in which it is contained, and the inks and paints with which it was written and illuminated have disposed of the notion that the manuscript dates from the thirteenth century or that it is the work of Roger Bacon. Radio carbon dating of slivers from a range of pages has firmly dated the book’s materials to the years around 1430. The vellum pages are made of good-quality (and therefore expensive) calfskin, commonly used in book production all over medieval Europe. (Goatskin vellum, by contrast, would have strengthened the case for a southern German or Italian origin, a provenance favored by many students of the manuscript.)Many people have been proposed as possible authors of the Voynich manuscript, among them, Roger Bacon, John Dee or Edward Kelley, Giovanni Fontana, or Voynich himself. Please refer to The Voynich Manuscript, edited by Raymond Clemens Yale University Press 2016 and to Voynich manuscript - Wikipedia for summations of the proposed authorship of the manuscript.Marci's 1665/1666 (Jackson, David (January 23, 2015). "The Marci letter found inside the VM") cover letter to Kircher says that, according to his friend the late Raphael Mnishovsky, “the book had once been bought by Rudolf II How Roman Emperor and King of Bohemia for 600 ducats” (66.42 troy ounce actual gold weight, or 2.07 kg). (Mnishovsky had died in 1644, more than 20 years earlier, and the deal must have occurred before Rudolf's abdication in 1611, at least 55 years before Marci's letter. However, Karl Widemann sold books to Rudolf II in March 1599.)According to the letter, Mnishovsky (but not necessarily Rudolf) speculated that the author was 13th century Franciscan friar and polymath Roger Bacon. Marci said that he was suspending judgment about this claim, but it was taken quite seriously by Wilfrid Voynich who did his best to confirm it. Voynich (Here's What You Need to Know About the Mysterious Voynich Manuscript) contemplated the possibility that the author was Albertus Magnus if not Roger Bacon. The assumption that Bacon was the author led Voynich to conclude that John Dee sold the manuscript to Rudolf. Dee was a mathematician and astrologer at the court of Queen Elizabeth I of Englandwho was known to have owned a large collection of Bacon's manuscripts.Some suspect Voynich of having fabricated the manuscript himself. As an antique book dealer, he probably had the necessary knowledge and means, and a lost book by Roger Bacon would have been worth a fortune. Furthermore, Baresch's letter and Marci's letter only establish the existence of a manuscript, not that the Voynich manuscript is the same one mentioned. These letters could possibly have been the motivation for Voynich to fabricate the manuscript, assuming that he was aware of them. However, many consider the expert internal dating of the manuscript and the June 1999 discovery of Baresch's letter to Kircher as having eliminated this possibility.It has been suggested that some illustrations in the books оf an Italian engineer, Giovanni Fontana, slightly resemble Voynich illustrations (Has the Enigmatic Voynich Manuscript Code Finally Been Cracked?). Fontana was familiar with cryptography and used it in his books, although he didn't use the Voynich script but a simple substitution cipher. In the book Secretum de thesauro experimentorum ymaginationis hominum (Secret of the treasure-room of experiments in man's imagination), written c. 1430, Fontana described mnemonic machines, written in his cypher. At least Bellicorum instrumentorum liber and this book used a cryptographic system, described as a simple, rational cipher, based on signs without letters or numbers.Baresch's letter bears some resemblance to a hoax that orientalist Andreas Mueller once played on Kircher (Athanasius Kircher, Victim of Pranks). Mueller sent some unintelligible text to Kircher with a note explaining that it had come from Egypt, and asking him for a translation. Kircher reportedly solved it. It has been speculated that these were both cryptographic tricks played on Kircher to make him look foolish.Raphael Mnishovsky, the friend of Marci who was the reputed source of Bacon's story, was himself a cryptographer and apparently invented a cipher which he claimed was uncrackable (c. 1618). This has led to the speculation that Mnishovsky might have produced the Voynich manuscript as a practical demonstration of his cipher and made Baresch his unwitting test subject (No, the Mysterious Voynich Manuscript Is Not Written in Hebrew). Indeed, the disclaimer in the Voynich manuscript cover letter could mean that Marci suspected some kind of deception.In 2006, Nick Pelling (Pelling, Nicholas John (2006). The Curse of the Voynich: The Secret History of the World's Most Mysterious Manuscript. Compelling Press), proposed that the Voynich manuscript was written by 15th century North Italian architect Antonio Averlino (also known as "Filarete"), a theory broadly consistent with the radiocarbon dating.The Voynich manuscript has been studied by many professional and amateur cryptographers, including American and British codebreakers from both World Wars I and II. Most assume that the manuscript is written in what’s called a substitution cipher (Substitution cipher - Wikipedia). This is one of the simplest and most ancient types of codes, in which letters of an established alphabet are swapped for invented ones. The problem is that hundreds of years of study have been unable to work out which language the Voynich manuscript was originally written in.According to the "letter-based cipher" theory, the Voynich manuscript contains a meaningful text in some European language that was intentionally rendered obscure by mapping it to the Voynich manuscript "alphabet" through a cipher of some sort—an algorithm that operated on individual letters. This was the working hypothesis for most 20th-century deciphering attempts, including an informal team of NSA cryptographers led by William F. Friedman in the early 1950s. (Reeds, Jim (September 7, 1994). "William F. Friedman's Transcription of the Voynich Manuscript" (PDF). AT&T Bell Laboratories. pp. 1–23). The main argument for this theory is that it is difficult to explain a European author using a strange alphabet—except as an attempt to hide information. Indeed, even Roger Bacon knew about ciphers, and the estimated date for the manuscript roughly coincides with the birth of cryptography in Europe as a relatively systematic discipline.The counterargument is that almost all cipher systems consistent with that era fail to match what is seen in the Voynich manuscript. For example, simple substitution ciphers would be excluded because the distribution of letter frequencies does not resemble that of any known language; while the small number of different letter shapes used implies that nomenclator and homophonic ciphers would be ruled out, because these typically employ larger cipher alphabets. Please ciphers (Alberti cipher - Wikipedia) were invented by Alberti in the 1460s and included the later Vigenère cipher, but they usually yield ciphertexts where all cipher shapes occur with roughly equal probability, quite unlike the language-like letter distribution which the Voynich manuscript appears to have.According to the "codebook cipher" theory (Languedoc Mysteries), the Voynich manuscript "words" would actually be codes to be looked up in a "dictionary" or codebook. The main evidence for this theory is that the internal structure and length distribution of many words are similar to those of Roman numerals, which at the time would be a natural choice for the codes. However, book-based ciphers would be viable for only short messages, because they are very cumbersome to write and to read.That the encryption system started from a fundamentally simple cipher and then augmented it by adding nulls (meaningless symbols), homophones (duplicate symbols), transposition cipher (letter rearrangement), false word breaks, and more is also entirely possible.Steganography (Steganography - Wikipedia) that the text of the Voynich manuscript is mostly meaningless, but contains meaningful information hidden in inconspicuous details—e.g., the second letter of every word, or the number of letters in each line. This technique, is very old and was described by Johannes Trithemius in 1499. Though the plain text was speculated to have been extracted by a Cardan grille (an overlay with cut-outs for the meaningful text Cardan grille - Wikipedia) of some sort, this seems somewhat unlikely because the words and letters are not arranged on anything like a regular grid. Still, steganographic claims are hard to prove or disprove, since stegotexts can be arbitrarily hard to find.It has been suggested that the meaningful text could be encoded in the length or shape of certain pen strokes. There are indeed examples of steganography from about that time that use letter shape (italic vs. upright) to hide information. However, when examined at high magnification, the Voynich manuscript pen strokes seem quite natural, and substantially affected by the uneven surface of the vellum.Linguist Jacques Guy once suggested that the Voynich manuscript text could be some little-known natural language, written in the the plain with an invented alphabet. The word structure is similar to that of many language families of East and Central Asia, mainly Sino-Tibetan (Chinese, Tibetan, and Burmese), Austroasiatic (Vietnamese, Khmer, etc.) and possibly Tai ( Thai, Lao, etc.). In many of these languages, the words have only one syllable; and syllables have a rather rich structure, including the patterns. (Lev Grossman, "When Words Fail: The Struggle to Decipher the World's Most Difficult Book", Lingua franca, April 1999).This theory has some historical plausibility. While those languages generally had native scripts, these were notoriously difficult for Western visitors. This difficulty motivated the invention of several phonetic scripts, mostly with Local letters, but sometimes with invented alphabets. Although the known examples are much later than the Voynich manuscript, history records hundreds of explorers and missionaries who could have done it—even before Marco Polo's 13th-century journey, but especially after Visiting do Gama sailed the sea route to the Orient in 1499.The first page includes two large red symbols, which have been compared to a Chinese-style book title. (Chinese Sinograms in the Voynich THE VOYNICH MANUSCRIPT)The main argument for this theory is that it is consistent with all statistical properties of the Voynich manuscript text which have been tested so far, including doubled and tripled words (which have been found to occur in Chinese and Vietnamese texts at roughly the same frequency as in the Voynich manuscript) (Voynich: the evidence).It also explains the apparent lack of numerals and Western syntactic features (such as articles and copulas), and the general inscrutability of the illustrations. Another possible hint is two large red symbols on the first page, which have been compared to a Chinese-style book title, inverted and badly copied. Also, the apparent division of the year into 360 days (rather than 365 days), in groups of 15 and starting with Pisces, are features of the Chinese agricultural calendar(jie qi, 節氣). The main argument against the theory is the fact that no one (including scholars at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing) has been able to find any clear examples of Asian symbolism or Asian science in the illustrations.In 1976, James R Child, a linguist of Indo-European languages, proposed that the manuscript was written in a "hitherto unknown North Germanic dialect" (The Voynich Manuscript Revisited'). He identified in the manuscript a "skeletal syntax several elements of which are reminiscent of certain Germanic languages", while the content itself is expressed using "a great deal of obscurity".Leo Levitov proposed in his 1987 book, (Solution of the Voynich Manuscript: A Liturgical Manual for the Endura Rite of the Cathari Heresy, the Cult of Isis), that the manuscript is a handbook for the Cathar rite of Endura written in a Flemish based creole. He further claimed that Catharism was descended from the cult of Isis. However, Levitov's decipherment has been refuted on several grounds, not least of which is its being unhistorical. Levitov had a poor grasp on the history of the Cathars, and his depiction of Endura as an elaborate suicide ritual is at odds with surviving documents describing it as a fast. Likewise there is no known link between Catharism and Isis.In February 2014, Professor Stephen Bax of the University of Bedfordshire made public his research into using "bottom up" methodology to understand the manuscript (Voynich: the evidence). His method involves looking for and translating proper nouns, in association with relevant illustrations, in the context of other languages of the same time period. A paper he posted online offers tentative translation of 14 characters and 10 words. He suggests the text is a treatise on nature written in a natural language, rather than a code.In 2014, a team led by Dr. Diego Amancio of the University of São Paulo's Institute of Mathematical and Computer Sciences published a paper detailing a study using statistical methods to analyse the relationships of the words in the text (Probing the statistical properties of unknown texts: application to the Voynich Manuscript. Amancio DR, et al. PLoS One. 2013).Instead of trying to find the meaning, Amancio's team used complex network modelling to look for connections and clusters of words. By employing concepts such as frequency and intermittence, which measure occurrence and concentration of a term in the text, Amancio was able to discover the manuscript's keywords and create three-dimensional models of the text's structure and word frequencies. Their conclusion was that in 90% of cases, the Voynich systems are similar to those of other known books such as the Bible, indicating that the book is an actual piece of text in an actual language, and not well-planned gibberish.The unusual features of the Voynich manuscript text (such as the doubled and tripled words), and the suspicious contents of its illustrations support the idea that the manuscript is a hoax. In other words, if no one is able to extract meaning from the book, then perhaps this is because the document contains no meaningful content in the first place. Various hoax theories have been proposed over time.In 2003, computer scientist Gordon Rugg showed that text with characteristics similar to the Voynich manuscript could have been produced using a table of word prefixes, stems, and suffixes, which would have been selected and combined by means of a perforated paper overlay (https://doi.org/10.1080/0161-110...).The latter device, known as a Cardan grille (Cardan grille - Wikipedia) was invented around 1550 as an encryption tool, more than 100 years after the estimated creation date of the Voynich manuscript. Some maintain that the similarity between the pseudo-texts generated in Gordon Rugg's experiments and the Voynich manuscript is superficial, and the grille method could be used to emulate any language to a certain degree.In April 2007, a study by Austrian researcher Andreas Schinner published in Cryptologia supported the hoax hypothesis (https://doi.org/10.1080/01611190...). Schinner showed that the statistical properties of the manuscript's text were more consistent with meaningless gibberish produced using a quasi stochastic method such as the one described by Rugg, than with Latin and medieval German texts.Some scholars have claimed that the manuscript's text appears too sophisticated to be a hoax. In 2013 Marcelo Montemurro, a theoretical physicist from the University of Manchester, (Keywords and Co-Occurrence Patterns in the Voynich Manuscript: An Information-Theoretic Analysis), published findings claiming that semantic networks exist in the text of the manuscript, such as content-bearing words occurring in a clustered pattern, or new words being used when there was a shift in topic.With this evidence, he believes it unlikely that these features were intentionally "incorporated" into the text to make a hoax more realistic, as most of the required academic knowledge of these structures did not exist at the time the Voynich manuscript would have been written.(Alphabet by Hildegard von Bingen, Litterae ignotae, which she used for her language Lingua Ignota)Detail of the "nymphs" on page 141; f78r CITATION OF IMAGE : WIKIMEDIA COMMONSIn their 2004 book, Gerry Kennedy and Rob Churchill suggest the possibility that the Voynich manuscript may be a case of glossolalia (speaking-in-tongues), channeling, or outsider art. If so, the author felt compelled to write large amounts of text in a manner which resembles stream of consciousness, either because of voices heard or because of an urge. This often takes place in an invented language in glossolalia, usually made up of fragments of the author's own language, although invented scripts for this purpose are rare.Kennedy and Churchill (The Voynich Manuscript: The Unsolved Riddle of an Extraordinary Book Which has Defied Interpretation for Centuries 2004) use Hildegard von Bingen's works to point out similarities between the Voynich manuscript and the illustrations that she drew when she was suffering from severe bouts of migraine, which can induce a trance-like state prone to glossolalia. Prominent features found in both are abundant "streams of stars", and the repetitive nature of the nymphs in the biological section.This theory has been found unlikely by other researchers. The theory is virtually impossible to prove or disprove, short of deciphering the text. Kennedy and Churchill are themselves not convinced of the hypothesis, but consider it plausible. In the culminating chapter of their work, Kennedy states his belief that it is a hoax or forgery. Churchill acknowledges the possibility that the manuscript is a synthetic forgotten language (as advanced by Friedman) or a forgery as preeminent theories. However, he concludes that, if the manuscript is genuine, mental illness or delusion seems to have affected the author.In 2014, expert in applied linguistics Professor Stephen Bax published an article in which he claimed to have translated ten words from the manuscript using techniques similar to those used to successfully translate Egyptian hieroglyphs. He claimed the manuscript to be a treatise on nature, in a Near Eastern or Asian language, but no full translation was made before his death in 2017.Recently, history researcher and television writer Nicholas Gibbs (Voynich manuscript: the solution) have cracked the code, discovering that the book is actually a guide to women's health that's mostly plagiarized from other guides of the era.Gibbs realized he was seeing a common form of medieval Latin abbreviations, often used in medical treatises about herbs. "From the herbarium incorporated into the Voynich manuscript, a standard pattern of abbreviations and ligatures emerged from each plant entry," he wrote. "The abbreviations correspond to the standard pattern of words used in the Herbarium Apuleius Platonicus – aq = aqua (water), dq = decoque / decoctio (decoction), con = confundo (mix), ris = radacis / radix (root), s aiij = seminis ana iij (3 grains each), etc." So this wasn't a code at all; it was just shorthand. The text would have been very familiar to anyone at the time who was interested in medicine.The mysterious medieval Voynich Manuscript is probably a women's health manual, according to history researcher Nicholas Gibbs.Once he realized that the Voynich Manuscript was a medical textbook, Gibbs explained, it helped him understand the odd images in it. Pictures of plants referred to herbal medicines, and all the images of bathing women marked it out as a gynecological manual. Baths were often prescribed as medicine, and the Romans were particularly fond of the idea that a nice dip could cure all ills. Zodiac maps were included because ancient and medieval doctors believed that certain cures worked better under specific astrological signs. Gibbs even identified one image—copied, of course, from another manuscript—of women holding donut-shaped magnets in baths. Even back then, people believed in the pseudoscience of magnets.As soon as Gibbs' article hit the Internet, news about it spread rapidly through social media, arousing the skepticism of cipher geeks and scholars alike. Unfortunately, say experts, his analysis was a mix of stuff we already knew and stuff he couldn't possibly prove.So where does that leave us with our understanding of the Voynich Manuscript? Exhaustive scientific and conservational analysis of the parchment on which the manuscript is written, the stitching of the binding in which it is contained, and the inks and paints with which it was written and illuminated have disposed of the notion that the manuscript dates from the thirteenth century or that it is the work of Roger Bacon. Radio carbon dating of slivers from a range of pages has firmly dated the book’s materials to the years around 1430. The vellum pages are made of good-quality (and therefore expensive) calfskin, commonly used in book production all over medieval Europe. (Goatskin vellum, by contrast, would have strengthened the case for a southern German or Italian origin, a provenance favored by many students of the manuscript.)Equally, all this effectively rules out any possibility that the manuscript is a post-medieval forgery—it is inconceivable that the huge quantities of blank parchment needed for such a forgery could have survived from the early fifteenth century. The book’s pages, whose consistency suggests that they derived from a single source, would have required at least fourteen or fifteen entire calfskins. It is therefore overwhelmingly likely that the manuscript was written and illustrated soon after the parchment was prepared, in the first third of the fifteenth century. Its fluent cursive handwriting, without emendation of any kind, seems incompatible with the notion that it might nevertheless be a careful scribal copy of an earlier medieval text. The dating of its materials to the early fifteenth century rules out the suggestion, credited by art historians like Erwin Panofsky, but never very convincing, that the manuscript contains illustrations of plants such as capsicum or the sunflower, unknown before the discovery of the New World.The manuscript was probably composed of 100s of texts, notes, observations and illustrations related to aspects of women's health during the Midieval and Rennassance periods, along with a little alchemical knowledge. In all likelihood, women did not constitute the intended audience, rather it would have been directed towards herbalists, alchemists, philosphers and pharmicists. But from the start, the known evidence suggests that the manuscript was only known by a select group of scholars and royality, experiencing a cyclical pattern of a few years in the spotlight, followed by centuries of relative anonmyity in secret collections and libraries.

I would argue that the UK is not a police state but does have many elements of a police state.It’s not a police state now but if it started hanging out with the wrong sort of authoritarian states behind the school sheds and got into some bad habits and some worse parties got into power it could very easily become one.Elements of a police state:signNow police surveilance: The UK ticks this box hard. We’re one of the most monitored countries in the world.Restrictions on citizens mobility: The UK is pretty good on this score.Restrictions on freedom to express or communicate political or other views: previously the UK was fairly good on this front but has been showing some worrying signs.For example anti-terrorism powers tend to get used against peaceful protestors a great deal.A few years ago parliament passed the “Serious Organised Crime And Police Act”.Weirdly they decided that people waving signs around outside parliament were an issue to be dealt with under that act. Such serious criminals.It used to be that if you were in London and felt the urge to go wave a sign outside parliament to let your MP know you weren’t happy with their actions you could do so.Now, if you want to go to parliament square and have a picnic with a cake that bears upon it the word “peace” you must first gain police approval at least 7 days in advance before cracking open the Tupperware seal and exposing your cake to the world. Or you could go to jail.They can restrict the number of people allowed to protest, they can restrict the number of banners and they can restrict the size of the banners. So they could say “2 of you, one of them, 2 inches” and leave you waving a matchbox around saying “wadda we want? bigger banners now!” (shamelessly stolen from the above video)The police aren’t horrible about it. But they can be terribly terribly intimidating. if you’re a kid having anti-terrorist police turn up to pull you out of class and loom over you is not exactly the most non-police-state thing that can happen.Police “sorry” for questioning schoolboy over protest at David Cameron's officeA friend of mine used to date a member of this protest groupCity Farmshttp://www.spacehijackers.org/html/projects/mayday03/report.htmlhttp://www.spacehijackers.org/html/projects/whitechapelstar/nipples.htmlTwo Tank Tuesday(context, they protested one of the worlds biggest arms fairs in london by buying a perfectly legal tank. Did you know you can perfectly legally rent a tank for the day in the UK?)Years later she was deeply creeped out because when they went on dates she’d find they had a police tail. Routinely. Protestors get a remarkable amount of intimidation from police. If your house is broken into in the UK better hope you’re an even number house because of police manpower constraints. Attend a few too many protests on the other hand and there will always be a police officer nearby if you need them.UK police also have extremely broad discretion when it comes to what can be considered “offensive” and tend to go after people who insult police, police actions or soldiers on social media.Search without warrants:The UK used to be a lot more similar to the US in that police needed a warrant to search your home.Then the law was changed such that if you’re arrested on suspicion of an “indictable offense” they don’t need a warrant and can walk right in. Then a while later a whole host of laws were expanded such that they are technically indictable but almost never actually are.You can now, technically, be arrested for littering and then the police can search your home since you’ve been arrested for an indictable offense. The laws tend to be broadly written such that a rule really intended to provide a signNow maximum penalty for fly tipping can still technically be used to make it legal to do a warrantless search the house of someone who drops a sweet wrapper.The state can keep trying you for the same crime until they get a guilty verdict:The UK used to have a similar rule to the USA where you couldn’t be taken to court again and again and again accused of the same crime. A few years ago parliament removed this protection. Now they can keep trying until they get a guilty verdict.Double jeopardy law ushered outState censorship and tight state control of communication:The UK is in the middle of a very very worrying trend with the current prime minister having a particular hard-on for locking down the internet and requiring back-doors in encryption to allow the government to read every communication between citizens. Of course the actual terrorists tended to already be known to the security services or even went on TV to talk about terrorism or got named as “terrorist of the month” in ISIS’s public magazine (not even kidding) and typically didn’t even use encryption …. but for some reason they need to read all our private letters to keep us safe.Theresa May says the internet must now be regulated following London Bridge terror attackhttp://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-06-04/theresa-may-international-agreements-needed-protect-internet-extremist-contentUK's new Snoopers' Charter just passed an encryption backdoor law by the backdoor

The Tape ARchiver binds all the files to one. So that you can easily store them on tape or send them over the network like ftp or sftp, ssh, or netcat. You preserve all file attributes, you can create multi-archives for the case that you have a filesystem (like shitty old FAT) that doesn’t work with files bigger than 32 bit bytes, which means on Linux 4 GB or on Windows where they used signed integers in their great wisdom about coding for that issue 2 GB.Just try to copy an image copy of a partition that you saved for a client to his hilarious FAT32 formatted portable drive. You can do that, but only if you create a multi archive. You don’t want to compress this, because compressing of a whole partition will stop your computer from working for a day or two and it is also not friendly to the client, when he wants to extract the data from that multivolume.You can do a lot of things to a single file archive. Like putting some encryption on it for example. If you have a public or semi-public place to store data, you might want to encrypt it. Like putting files to your Google Cloud for example, or Dropbox.With the NSA reading through all your crap, there might be stuff, that is not for their eyes, like the last words that your mother spoke to you. Like political ideas that you keep in private and in secret, because you are living in a country that would kill you just for thinking them.And many more. So, as long as a country like the US is cooperating with oppressive states and making hidden deals with them, at the same time is spying on the world and every citizen, law abiding or not and storing the data of everyone. As long as it is so, that the data they have, will be in the possession of the worst states of this world.It is a logical conclusion. Not even a political, that are the facts. And you have to protect yourself. It is sadly not the case anymore that the US is exporting freedom and democracy to the world, like it did in the past of history. The system is more like exporting the worst of systems in the world and spreading terrible ideas everywhere, just to mention unlawful imprisonment, torture, and I don’t want to talk about deals where they ship prisoners to countries that will do everything to a prisoner, including killing them. Not talking about the states that still kill prisoners, but alas, this barbaric stuff slowly comes to an end, finally.In Germany at least, we have a law in our Grundgesetz against that case. So the government is by the constitution forbidden to do such things. It’s sadly not like that in the US. So.Encrypt your data. And you have to have your files in a state, where you can do that. The TAR archive is that state.So, you can see the tarball as a state of a directory or directory structure where you can handle it as if on some sort of virtual partition. You can spread it into parts, store it on unorganized storage places, protect it or later compress it as a whole. You can save it somewhere to restore it later like a perfect backup system. That’s what archiver means. You can even handle the tarball as if it was a directory, if you mount that thing as a directory somewhere.sudo apt-get install archivemount archivemount yourfile.tar ~/mnt/ Our wonderful invention, the internet, is under attack. Under attack of some of the most powerful states and corporations of the world, that use it against us and spying on us. At least we can make it hard for them unless we have solved this unspeakable social state of affairs.And remove the people from power that misuse it in a way that is not in our interest. With that are more and more establishing some of the worst dystopias that our writers and literature has ever produced as a warning.And our internet has become the battlefield where that happens. We, the engineers are either fighting against this dystopia or we are supporting it. With that supporting everything I am outspoken against.We are the warriors, the code warriors. And this war is on us to win.Everybody on all sides always think: “We are the good, they are the evil.” And things can be turned funny in the heads. But the internet is something that can always seen from outside. And therefore from a neutral position. You can’t do at the moment anything against them bombing our network by spying and attacking it. At least we can build bunkers to save our families unless we found a way to fight back and remove those forces from power.Tar is the concrete we are using for that.