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Slashback: Sale, Secrecy, Lasers

More details below in tonight's Slashback on the sale of Corel's Linux division, the public posting of the encryption scheme some bright young Irish whippersnapper has come up with, fun details on those toys you can roll around with your computer, and winners of another contest.

That's a lot of Molsen. Bigger R writes contributes this link to a story in the Calgary Herald with more detail on the sale of Corel's Linux division which was mentioned in vague terms the other day. It's going to a company called Xandros, in exchange for cash and equity, so Corel will still have at least some interest in the continued success of Linux, or at least its distro. A snippet: "Xandros Corp. president Michael Bego, who started the Ottawa company recently in preparation for the deal announced Wednesday, is also a shareowner in Linux Global Partners, a privately held New York venture firm that put up $10 million US to start Xandros."

Small, cheap and fun are all good words. An Anonymous Coward writes "There's an announcement of the winners of the embedded linux journal's design contest over at linuxdevices.com. Cool projects -- voting system, digital audio workstation, solar racing vehicle, GizmoCopter Project, and Hacking BigMouth Billy Bass. Follow the urls for the projects which are given in the announcement to learn about each project. Oh, and the prize for winning each category? An all expense paid trip to Costa Rica. Dang, why didn't I enter?"

Stuff that's hard to read. John Sokol writes with an update on the Cayley-Purser Algorithm mentioned here before.

"This story went through some time back about a 16-year-old girl outdoing RSA, but it lacked any discussion of the actual algorithm. This link is her paper that she now has posted on the net. It seems reasonable. Maybe someone here can find a flaw in it?"

Roll 'em. Slide100 writes: "It seems that there is more to the desktop rover that was posted about on Tuesday.

The marketing manager sent me a PDF file that explains some more - apparently, they just don't have the time to update the website.

Each rover comes with a cable that plugs into the transmitter and software to allow control of the rover from your computer (or through TCP/IP).

Additionally, each rover has 'Laser Tag' as an integral part of the vehicle. 10 hits (including sound effects) and your rover is disabled 'till the next match See it here. BTW - I have nothing to do with the company, I just think its very cool."

5 of 141 comments (clear)

  1. CP Algorithm broken long ago as public key scheme by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    Obviously the poster did not read the article himself. In a postscript of her own paper (http://www.cayley-purser.ie/#Post_Script__An_Atta ck_on_the_CP_Algorit), a successful attack is described. The CP algorithm is only useful as a private key scheme, which is no big news.

  2. Laser tag? by Elequin · · Score: 2, Informative

    I don't see anything about laser tag on the vehicle, but I did get this when I was trying to find it:

    This page is being modified, Sorry about that -
    come back later and we should have the
    changes completed. Please Click your
    browser's "Back" Button.

    Thank You!


    Heh. I guess maybe they're trying to add it, or trying to keep from getting slashdotted too badly?

  3. FYI by nnet · · Score: 2, Informative
    FYI: its Molson's.

  4. Re:Desk Rover + X10 Camera = Fun? by jedwards · · Score: 2, Informative

    Don't need an X10. Plantraco sell a wireless camera which slots right into the rover.

  5. Re:CP Algorithm broken long ago as public key sche by dragons_flight · · Score: 2, Informative

    Block ciphers like DES and AES are much faster to compute than even C-P, since they don't require multiprecision arithmetic. AES, in particular, screams.

    The encryption/decrytpion of C-P uses only matrices of integers (all operations are modulo n). Having another encryption method might not be needed, but you're objection doesn't seem accurate.

    Or is there some meaning for "multiprecision arithmetic" other than multiprecision floating-point arithmetic?