On Sun, Mar 01, 2009 at 12:15:36PM -0500, [email protected] scripsit: > Same with books on silicon, or however they do it. A paper book I can > tell if it's been altered, i.e. written on. A cyberbook I won't be > able to tell. It really leaves it open to abuse and hacking.
It's also easier to tell if something has been altered; this is what cryptographic hashes are for. (md5sum, sha1sum, etc.) Paper books you have to read with great attention to catch any alterations. You get your official original electronic document; you generate the cryptographic hash, which is a long number but not too long to write down somewhere if you want to. Any subsequent copy where the cryptographic hash doesn't match has been corrupted. (In this context, altered and corrupted are the same.) This is widely used now for detecting corruption in big binary files shipped over the net; there is certainly no technical bar to using it for ebooks. -- Graydon -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
