At Fri, 01 Sep 2006 17:04:37 -0400, "Jonathan S. Shapiro" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > On Fri, 2006-09-01 at 20:34 +0200, Marcus Brinkmann wrote: > > > Well, it would be an interesting trick if you could change the nature > > of information by mere postulation of a believe about it. > > But this is exactly the question at hand: *is* this the nature of > information, or is it a reflection of a correctable technological > limitation?
From an information theory point of view, a "trusted computing system" is nothing but a black box, which contains some information, which we can't measure, an input line and an output line. Through the input line, we can add information to the box, and through the output line we can receive information from the box. Note that any information that I can not (at all) extract through the output box is for all practical purposes not there. It's as if it doesn't exist. The information that I can extract through the output line is unrestricted by the "trusted computing system". I hope that you agree that this information has all the properties that Jefferson attributes to it. So, all the information I can extract is of the kind of information that Jefferson describes. All the information that I can not extract does not exist for any practical purposes. It can not have influenced the output, as then it would be part of the output and thus extractable. A rigurous treatment will of course consider output probabilities instead of output messages. Does a "trusted computing system" with only analog output change anything? Not really. The analog output can be quantized. It may contain noise, but if it does, then this simply reduces the information that we can extract. The information that is lost in the noise is information that by definition we can not extract and thus it does practically not exist. I really can not see how "trusted computing" changes anything about the status of extracted information. Maybe I am misunderstanding what you are trying to say. Thanks, Marcus _______________________________________________ L4-hurd mailing list [email protected] http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/l4-hurd
