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This bit particularly:
MD4 was developed by Rivest in 1990. The message is padded to ensure that its length in bits plus 448 is divisible 512. A 64-bit binary representation of the original length of the message is then concatenated to the message. The message is processed in 512-bit blocks in the Damgård/Merkle iterative structure, and each block is processed in three distinct rounds. Attacks on versions of MD4 with either the first or the last rounds missing were developed very quickly by Den Boer and Bosselaers and others. Dobbertin has shown how collisions for the full version of MD4 can be found in under a minute on a typical PC. Clearly, MD4 should now be considered broken.

MD5 was developed by Rivest in 1991. It is basically MD4 with "safety-belts" and while it is slightly slower than MD4, it is more secure. The algorithm consists of four distinct rounds, which have a slightly different design from that of MD4. Message-digest size, as well as padding requirements, remains the same. Den Boer and Bosselaers have found pseudo-collisions for MD5, but there are no other known cryptanalytic results.

Bzzzt, the people you know are pronouncing it wrong. It is pronounced guh-NEW (Comes from The New Hackers Dictionary)

Bzzzt, the people you know are pronouncing it wrong. It is pronounced guh-NEW (Comes from The New Hackers Dictionary)

Perhaps you meant bespoke rather than proprietary

When was the last time you wrote your own bubble sort algorithm.

Never, but not because it would be like re-inventing the wheel. http://www.hack.gr/jargon/html/B/bubble-sort.html

It's either "new" as in GNU/Linux or "new" as in the African animal.

According to an interview I once read with St. RMS, it's pronounced GUH-noo, and not NOO. Just how Gary Gnu used to say it. And despite the fact that Gary was a Guh-Noo (Gnu) and that he pronounced his name just the way that the open source movement would later adopt the phrase, the recursive acronym Gnu's Not Unix has nothing at all to do with the African animal.

Yeah, waiting a bit is smart.. I make certain never to install updates on my machines until a week or so has gone by.. The potential for mishap is outweighed by my lack of trust for MS. Errata updates, however, I install as soon as I get the RH e-mail.

As for understanding ^H^H, many probably understand, many many more most likely assume or just pick up on the context clues. After reading about the Hacker Writing Style, I figured out why I do a lot of what I do when writing, even though I'm not much of a programmer, appearantly I think like one. The file I linked to isn't exactly the one I read originally, but it's got about the same stuff. I think the one I found originally was in the wikipedia, or linked from it.

Please don't RTFJF. You'll just end up with some distorted view of what ESR thinks a hacker is (i.e., a description of ESR and his hairy buddies). Hell, it'll even have you believing that hackers don't drink.

Jargon File entry: http://www.hack.gr/jargon/html/sections/a-portrait -of-j-random-hacker.html

Sounds like creeping featuritis to me.

Who was I supposed to be trolling? Are you saying that there are a large number of people reading /. that 1) are involved in the design of the space shuttle and 2) want to keep the system the way it is, so that more people will die, and that I'm therefore trolling them?

And can you give me an example of the "predictable responses" this is supposed to illicit?

Even if you meant it in the less common sense ("a troll is categorized by containing some assertion that is wrong but not overtly controversial") can you explain what is wrong with the idea of opening up the shuttle design process? If an institution is failing to do its job and people are dying as a consequence, one of the best ways to fix the problem is to enable a large number of people to see (in detail) what is going on, motivate them to care, and motivate the system to listen. Bridge design (to name just one example) improved dramatically when these three conditions were met (large number of people study the designs, they care because they and people they care about use the bridges, and companies that build bad bridges don't prosper). You may disagree but that doesn't mean I'm a troll!

I suppose getting moderated "troll" for suggesting a way to fix problems before someone dies (instead of forming a commitee to investigate each tragedy as it happens) is better than getting moderated "offtopic" for responding to the article instead of to the blather of all the people who didn't read it, but it's just as anoying.

-- MarkusQ

"Our hardware runs better without Windows"

As another brit, I have to disagree with the above. The BBC has made some classic programs, buts its just as full of lazy dross as the commercial channels here. Its just a case of Sturgeons Law. All media organisations get full of lazy people and petty political plays, and start forgetting to bother to make quality programs or to try new things. Despite its state funded nature the BBC likes to go after high ratings just as much the commercial channels. Its needs popularty to give it its political reason to exist. At the moment theres a like of quality programming here, the only programmes pushing any boundries are SPACED and Armstrong and Miller both on channel 4. Channel 4 is a hybrid channel its funded by advertising but was given a garantied cut of advertising from the ITV channels. Now you might thing not having to answer to anyone would need a channel staid and lazy. But somehow the reverse was true and it consistantly pushes the boundaries of art (and some would say taste and decency). So I think the answer comes down to a simple give programme makers room to try new things. P.S. Best thing I saw today on TV, Starship Troopers the series (Sky one).

List of Jargon Resources Mirror Sites USA:

• http://www.akrotech.com/~darkstar/jargon
• http://memes.org/jargon
• http://www.journalism.wisc.edu/jargon/
• http://www.mindspring.com/~li mbert/hacking/jargon.htm
• http://www.iscvt.org/jargon/jargon.html
• http://www.babcom.com/jargon/index.html
• http://www.hackboy.com/jargon
• http://www.pulhas.org/
• http://www2.netdoor.com/~lhand
• http://avatar.deva.net/
• http://www.blee.net/jargon
• http://www.fortuneci ty.com/skyscraper/jolt/15/jargonindex.html
• http://www.jargon.8hz.com/
• http://culture.0wnz-u.org/
• http://www.houseofhack.com/jargon
• http://jollyrogers.com/jargon/
• http://handel.math.psu.edu/jargon

• http://celestrion.totalaccess.net/do cs/jargon/
• http://www.pir.net/pir/jargon/
• http://www.technozen.com/tetsuo/jargon/
• http://ude.org/jargon
• http://web.chad.org/usr/doc/jargon-file/

• http://karnak.nmc.siu.edu/jargon/

Australia:

• http://ecco.bsee.swin.edu.au/text/jargon/

• http://ecco.bsee.swin.edu.au/text/jargon

Czechoslovakia: ttp://www.instinct.org/texts/jargon-file/

Finland: http://zone.pspt.fi/jargon/

Germany:

• http://www.ude.org/jargon
• http://www.ghks.de/computer/jargon/
• http://www.math.fu-berlin.de/~rene/jargo n/
• http://hex.rz.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/jargon/
• http://www.informatik.hu-berlin.de /~bergt/jargon

Gret Britain: http://jargon.strugglers.net

Greece: http://www.hack.gr/jargon

Italy: http://beatles.cselt.stet.it/mirrors/jargon

Japan: http://www.vacia.is.tohoku.ac.jp/jargon/

Norway: http://www.pvv.ntnu.no/misc/jargon/ Poland: http://www.uci.agh.edu.pl/jargon/

Spain: http://www.undersec.com/jargon

Sweden: http://ftp.sunet.se/jargon/

U.K.:

• http://www.new.ox.ac.uk/admin/jargon/
• http://g.pet.cam.ac.uk/g/jargon/

• Overview of Stream Ciphers
• Shift-Register Stream Ciphers
• Several Stream Ciphers
• Crypto FAQ on Stream Ciphers

Remember stream ciphers != block ciphers.

RC4 and SEAL are notable stream ciphers; the usual distinction between a stream cipher and a block cipher is that block ciphers work with "blocks" (or "packets") of material, whereas stream ciphers work with far smaller "blocks," commonly a single word or byte. The pathological example of a stream cipher should encrypt bit-by-bit; on computers with word sizes of 32 bits, it would make considerable sense to treat a 32 bit word as the "atomic unit" being encrypted.

Whether the "atom" is a bit, byte, or word, the critical issue is that the unit of encryption is liable to be a whole lot smaller than the 56 bytes one might have in an Ethernet packet...