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."

Comments

CP Algorithm broken long ago as public key scheme

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Thoughts on the Cayley-Purser Algorithm

[Shoeboy]

What I find most interesting is the use of an inverse posiform discombobulator to repel sophisticated man in the middle attacks. Combined with the infix digestive emulator, this will be a key component in the "Digital Nervous System" of the future.

Superficially, the Algorithm appears similary to the Bosun-Smee cipher which has been shown to be vulnerable to chosen plaintext attacks when not run in output feedback mode. Personally I think an approach based on a 4x4 Holmes-Longpole network would have been a preferable starting point, but this would be more vulnerable to differential polyp-cystizing cryptanalyis. This can (theoretically) be compensated for by a field-coit gestation transform, but no one is quite sure how to overcome the slow encryption speed of such a system.

All in all it's a fairly interesting approach and I intend to study it further. I'd love to hear anyone elses opinion though.

--Shoeboy

desktop rover

[neonmatrix]

It's very strange that I am moved to post by this thing.

Many of the most useful little devices started as toys. For instance the Aztec and Inca civilizations had wheels on their childrens toys but not on their wagons and carts.

This little toy, or at least the model of a cheap travelling rover based on existing tech, could lead to cheaply revolutionized communications in cities and other compact spaces, such as aircraft carriers, etc.

Using these devices as messengers would cut down on traffic and save gasoline and car-use resources in many cities.

It sounds weird to us not because it's scientifically or fiscally implausible but because we are involved in a car culture.

It isn't just 16 year old girls that can crack...

[Kiss the Blade]

...codes. Controversial website adequacy.org has the skinny on autistic people being used by the NSA to crack RC5. Apparantly, each autist is capable of 1 megaflop per second, and there are many thousands of unused autists in our fine country. Are we not using their potential as we should?