There are always batteries and even flywheels to store some power for use come night, which can help reduce the power bought from the local utility even more.
Solar is one of those things that is becoming a "why not?" as opposed to a "why?" Throw a couple panels on a roof or a shed, have a MPPT controller [1] for a set of batteries, then add a 3000 watt inverter and a 15A circuit to the house where all chargers and relatively low, parasitic items can plug into. That way, even though the larger items like the A/C, hair dryers, and such end up using grid power, the small loads which are expensive over time are taken care of. With a battery bank and a transfer switch [2], one can even switch medium-size, but critical items like a refrigerator if there is a blackout.
[1]: PWM controllers are OK, but why waste the watts, especially if one has limited room for panels, so might as well pony up for something that is better for battery charging.
[2]: I prefer transfer switches over circuit breaker interlocks, just because they are more idiot-resistant, and a lot harder to backfeed the mains.
We already had a closed algorithm pushed on us in the 1990s -- Skipjack. It was broken shortly after it was declassified.
Weak algorithms will get torn apart quickly, because there are many people looking for weaknesses, both university researchers as well as criminal organizations.
Best thing one can do if worried about one algorithm -- do cascades. Realistically, three 256 bit algorithms won't give 768 bit security, but 258 bits. However, if one algorithm gets broken, the data is still protected. This applies to public key crypto as well. The ideal would be RSA, ECC, and maybe one more that is resistant to Shor's algorithm like Unbalanced Oil and Vinegar or something lattice based.
Re:He's partially right, but I would not repeal it
on
Beware the Internet
·
· Score: 1
Maybe we need to just keep on trucking, and add some new solutions to fix the problems we have, a lot of them are going with design on the cheap to survive next quarter's earnings reports.
For hospitals and other sensitive stuff, maybe we need to go back to air gaps. At least a bad guy would have to get physical access or compromise someone enough to plug a wire in, which is the same security level we had before the 'Net. If reports are needed, the concept of a "data diode" is a proven one (even if the implementation is two machines communicating via a serial port with one side's Tx line snipped.)
Internet security isn't magic; oftentimes it is a matter of won't than can't. Being in IT for many years, I've seen the mantra, "security has no ROI" said many, many times.
I think MS is shooting themselves in their own foot by canning Technet.
Instead, for the same stuff, MS demands I pay $6119.00 with a $2569.00 renewal each year? That pretty much cuts out anyone but businesses.
Microsoft needs developers and people versed in their offerings. Even though VS is not involved, cutting them off like this is not going to help with the paucity of apps for their device platforms. Instead of killing Technet, MS needs to actually expand it, so they can expand the Windows Phone ecosystem. Even though technically, Technet isn't for development, people still use it for testing, and without this, it may be a tipping point, since OSX development/testing tools are licensed at no charge with the OS.
My main use for Technet is to keep atop of the latest and greatest enterprise stuff. For example, self-server password resetting on domains, Windows InTune for edge boxes, Windows Server 2012 and the added features (deduplication, Storage Spaces, etc.) Even though I might be lucky enough to see about stuff through my job, I'd rather have something to keep my personal stuff separate.
Here in Austin, the Alamo Drafthouse gets rid of the texters posthaste. This isn't a typical theater, but one with tables so one can get decent food as well as decent beers. Text, and the ushers will be coming by to give the offender one warning, the second, they are escorted out, no refunds given.
What I've wondered about is using servers designed for power requirements at different times.
For example, server or blade "A" runs an Intel Atom and is made to be slow but energy saving. Server "B" runs much faster, but takes more electricity.
Add a SAN, cluster filesystems, and something like vMotion, and what can happen is that VMs that see heavy usage during the day can be moved to the higher speed servers as load permits. Then come evening, they get moved back to the slower processors, and the faster servers suspended or powered down. Some phones do this, with cores for low speed and high speed, moving tasks to a faster core as need be.
This. With the availability and reliability of SANs, virtual machine software, hypervisors, rack/blades, and such, there are a lot of tasks which are best moved to a rack/blades/SAN/VM architecture. Even high/extreme I/O can be handled by virtualization on POWER and SPARC platforms.
These days, for most tasks [1], the question is why not a rack/blade solution. A half-rack with a blade enclosure and a drive array oftentimes can do more than 2-3 racks of 1U machines.
Security separation is getting better and better. Even Microsoft is getting a solution out there that is good enough for prime time with Hyper-V in Windows Server 2012. IBM has had top notch separation (well, since the days of the 1970s and VMs on mainframes), Oracle as well.
To go "green", if a data center hasn't already gone with P2V, they should. There are always exceptions, but this is something to be considered.
This also helps with the next buzzword I'm hearing bandied about from the PHB types -- the SDDC, or software designed data center.
[1]: Ones that do not require specialized high-speed hardware like professional video capture. Of course, there are other tasks that require separation due to heavy I/O such as Netbackup servers. Then, there are servers that have to be separated for security or management reasons. For example, a SDMC for POWER boxes should be on discreet hardware for security reasons. Similar with the VM for vCenter management so it can be powered on and used even if the main cluster is inop.
Of course, having cheap, discrete hardware for large scale operations like Facebook makes rack/blades not as useful, but most data centers will benefit from the P2V move.
I've wondered why NEBS 48 volt systems are not more common. 48 volts is high enough that is doesn't need the big fat wires that 12VDC high-amperage connections do, and computers would just need a DC-DC converter to convert the incoming voltage to the 12 and 5 volt rail voltages.
It would be nice to see a standard 48 volt connector, something other than the one used for phantom power to mics. Preferably a connector with a built in high-amp switch (DC has no zero crossings so DC switches have to be beefy enough to handle the connects and disconnects at full amps.)
A DC-DC connector is less fussy than a rectifier, and without having to re-invert to AC (which has to be done by online UPS models), it is more efficient as well.
The problem is that the scumbuckets doing the calls have a lot of ways to easily thumb their nose at the FCC:
1: They use shell companies incorporated offshore. The FCC gets a big verdict, the company goes under, but the next day, another company is doing the same exact thing. All their equipment and workers are held and employed by secondary holding corporations (the details are all kept offshore), so the only thing lost might be a name.
2: With VoIP, it is trivial to forge numbers on Caller ID and run the shop from offshore.
3: There are so many DNC loopholes. Business "A" can rent out their mailing list, so business "B" can robocall at will, saying that due to the mailing list, they have a business relationship with the victim^Wcallee.
It is a very lucrative business because there is no real way for someone to block it and still have a usable phone. On landlines, there is no way to shut it off, as call blocking doesn't work on 800/888/866 numbers. iOS, one can use DND mode and only allow contacts (but it doesn't stop them from filling the voicemail up.) Android has Mr. Number which is a decent app, and uses a database of spammers/robocallers to deny calls with a busy signal.
Even if one has an insecure, but reliable service, that can come in handy, factoring in a threat model:
1: Before sending files to a cloud provider with an archival service, I use an archiving program, split the files up into segments (100-200 megs), then encrypt the segments with GPG and a decent passphrase. Not 100%, but it would force someone who manages to get access to have to try to compromise my endpoint or me (not hard, but it is a lot tougher than just passively guzzling out goodies.
2: TrueCrypt is a good enhancer for Dropbox. On Linux/Android, one can use EncFS as another way to securely store files.
Of course, sometimes one doesn't need cloud access to everything. I've found that in a lot of cases, I don't need to store all my archived data on Amazon Glacier. Instead, for most of it, a humble Blu-Ray burner and a utility like DVDisaster to add ECC to an ISO image is good enough for archiving data, especially if one does at least two copies of items, more for critical stuff. Encryption is easily provided, either file based using GPG or even raw OpenSSL, filesystem based using LUKS/TrueCrypt/FileVault, directory based like CFS, EncFS, or PhonebookFS, or archive based (winRAR, 7Zip, newer ZIP format, etc.)
Of course, this doesn't mean that one can forget about it once burned ott. Data should be archived onto two formats if possible, as one doesn't know if a batch of BD media might get a case of bit rot, or the hard disks one is using in a RAID array all get the same firmware bug and fail at the same time.
If I had a beefy server with a bunch of GPUs in it, so I can stream video graphics (similar to OnLive except running on the LAN), then for everything else, use the server with something like Citrix XenApp. That way, the desktop computer does relatively little work while the server is the machine that gets secured. Since most infections come from compromised websites, having the Web browsing done under Android will help reduce [1] the incidences of infection.
[1]: Not eliminate completely -- I've seen rogue sites which try to get the user to install a sideloaded package.
I have been seeing and reading about Android computers the size of a USB flash drive which can clip on a LCD monitor, and gets power from a USB cable.
I think in China and a lot of other countries, Android is a desktop OS, but other than a few models winding up on this side of the pond, I've not seen that many of these Android devices.
The brick through a window leaves an obvious signature, which makes life a lot easier when filing a police report and making an insurance claim on stolen goods.
A picked lock means (unless there is something obvious like major damage to the lock) that it is just my word with no evidence to back it up. Similar if the burglar is caught. A broken window will almost be a certain conviction. A picked lock can be explained away as the door was already unlocked, so a B&E charge would end up not being able to be prosecuted.
Copy of physical key's bitting dimensions + address info from a credit card. A remote intruder could download that, then sell lists of those to local gangs wanting some easy prey for home invasions.
Of course, there is the fact that if you want to buy a bump-resistant lock [1], it won't be something a key copying kiosk can copy easily.
[1]: I'm partial to Abloy's Protec2 Cliq line because it has the top tier mechanical pick resistance in addition to an electronic lock. Makes life easier to reprogram the lock to deny access just to the single lost key than have to rekey the lock and hand out new keys.
For Craigslist and other uses for a disposable number where I don't trust the other party, Google Voice is very handy. Just this use alone makes it worth having.
Correction, 1945 to 1946. This was a time that Western Europe was either going to figure out how to set member country differences aside or collapse completely.
I wish this were not the case. Maybe the US, Russia, and China need to do what European countries did in 1945 to 1945 and allow their students to travel freely among the nations. That way, the historic French/German hatred has waned to brawls at football matches and not trenches/tanks.
I probably sound crazy, but it might do good for an open border policy among the three superpowers. This doesn't mean that sovereignty has to be given up, just like Spain is still Spain, but at least the people in the country are not just seeing what is spoon fed to them in the press.
The 1946 decision to let Europeans wander among nations has done wonders for Europe... maybe we should consider the same thing here in the US?
I wonder how this law is to be enforced. If nothing is ever told that the breach happened (and logs "expired" pertaining to the breach), then only the party that did the intrusion would really have proof it ever happened.
General system logs don't have all the eDiscovery rules that E-mail do, and I sort of dread to have to keep every syslog/event log from every single machine for x amount of time, because an intruder can easily just trash the log archive server unless the logs were written something like WORM tape, or EMC's SAN that does WORM volumes.
In any case, this law is a start, and I wish similar laws would reach across the pond too. However, my fear is that even successful breaches will be classified as "attempts" and never reported... and if they are, it will be one person who gets the blame for failing to report it, they get sacked, and life goes on.
For something in the time periods mentioned, it is a good read, especially with the issues at the time.
I would say that crypto advances and computers go hand in hand, from the mechanical rotor devices to more advanced algorithms like DES, then to ones that have a larger bitsize and block size (AES.)
What will be the next big crypto advance is a next generation public key algorithm. RSA has been good, but it, DSA, and ECC can fall if a quantum computer of a decent size can be built. What is needed is a next generation public key algorithm, but those are a lot harder to come by than symmetric algos. What would be nice is an algorithm with a small key size like ECC (which since in theory a 256 bit ECC key is as secure as a 128 bit AES key), compared to 16384 bit keys for RSA.
Of course, the applied crypto part is important as well.
How about people just not just vote, but take the time to pay for the election fee and throw your hat in the ring? Why elect yet another clown when you can have your shot at a ringmaster, or at least a ringside seat?
Sounds stupid, but it would send a message at the minimum, and you might just win.
I understand going for another market because it is almost impossible to get into alternative energy in the US. In fact, were I a corporate officer, I would have just focused on having it be a facial lotion (anything that isn't related to burning the product), and not mention in public that the algae oil can be used as a fuel, so Big Oil with its elected official pets in tow doesn't pay the company a visit.
Then from there, work quietly on things like biodiesel and get with fleet makers.
It works without issue. I've used a BSD on and off since the days of Jolitz's 386BSD which came with a compressed image with a number of utilities on a 1.44MB floppy disk. Before this, if a person wanted source code to look at, they would have to pay a good mint to BSDI or a company like that... and of course, if you wanted SVR4 source... good luck with that.
I wish there were some type of test suite that phone makers could offer to emulate their products, just to see if things run, and report exceptions thrown. That way, if I write an app, I don't get a bunch of one star, "FCs on my blahblah" reviews, on some device that I've never heard about (such as BLU phones which are extremely popular south of the US.)
That way, if one device did keep crashing my app, I can at least stick a warning about it.
Android fragmentation isn't as bad as people point it out to be. If worried about it, just set the bar to 4.0 or 4.1 and call it done.
Easy fix: Timestamp a list of document hashes of both the file and the file's size. For example, MD5 hash, SHA1, SHA2, and SHA3. One has might be forgable, but it will be extremely difficult for someone to make a new document of the same exact size, but have all the hashes match.
Using this method, the timestamper has zero knowledge of what is in the document, not even how big it is. All they can tell is if a subsequent document was the same as a previous one that went through their system.
It is good to have it still up as a resource. Multiple, independent timestamping services might be enough proof for something, although a judge and a jury will more likely look at a physical notary seal and a signature with more regard than even the best cryptography and secured atomic clock.
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There are always batteries and even flywheels to store some power for use come night, which can help reduce the power bought from the local utility even more.
Solar is one of those things that is becoming a "why not?" as opposed to a "why?" Throw a couple panels on a roof or a shed, have a MPPT controller [1] for a set of batteries, then add a 3000 watt inverter and a 15A circuit to the house where all chargers and relatively low, parasitic items can plug into. That way, even though the larger items like the A/C, hair dryers, and such end up using grid power, the small loads which are expensive over time are taken care of. With a battery bank and a transfer switch [2], one can even switch medium-size, but critical items like a refrigerator if there is a blackout.
[1]: PWM controllers are OK, but why waste the watts, especially if one has limited room for panels, so might as well pony up for something that is better for battery charging.
[2]: I prefer transfer switches over circuit breaker interlocks, just because they are more idiot-resistant, and a lot harder to backfeed the mains.
We already had a closed algorithm pushed on us in the 1990s -- Skipjack. It was broken shortly after it was declassified.
Weak algorithms will get torn apart quickly, because there are many people looking for weaknesses, both university researchers as well as criminal organizations.
Best thing one can do if worried about one algorithm -- do cascades. Realistically, three 256 bit algorithms won't give 768 bit security, but 258 bits. However, if one algorithm gets broken, the data is still protected. This applies to public key crypto as well. The ideal would be RSA, ECC, and maybe one more that is resistant to Shor's algorithm like Unbalanced Oil and Vinegar or something lattice based.
Maybe we need to just keep on trucking, and add some new solutions to fix the problems we have, a lot of them are going with design on the cheap to survive next quarter's earnings reports.
For hospitals and other sensitive stuff, maybe we need to go back to air gaps. At least a bad guy would have to get physical access or compromise someone enough to plug a wire in, which is the same security level we had before the 'Net. If reports are needed, the concept of a "data diode" is a proven one (even if the implementation is two machines communicating via a serial port with one side's Tx line snipped.)
Internet security isn't magic; oftentimes it is a matter of won't than can't. Being in IT for many years, I've seen the mantra, "security has no ROI" said many, many times.
I think MS is shooting themselves in their own foot by canning Technet.
Instead, for the same stuff, MS demands I pay $6119.00 with a $2569.00 renewal each year? That pretty much cuts out anyone but businesses.
Microsoft needs developers and people versed in their offerings. Even though VS is not involved, cutting them off like this is not going to help with the paucity of apps for their device platforms. Instead of killing Technet, MS needs to actually expand it, so they can expand the Windows Phone ecosystem. Even though technically, Technet isn't for development, people still use it for testing, and without this, it may be a tipping point, since OSX development/testing tools are licensed at no charge with the OS.
My main use for Technet is to keep atop of the latest and greatest enterprise stuff. For example, self-server password resetting on domains, Windows InTune for edge boxes, Windows Server 2012 and the added features (deduplication, Storage Spaces, etc.) Even though I might be lucky enough to see about stuff through my job, I'd rather have something to keep my personal stuff separate.
Here in Austin, the Alamo Drafthouse gets rid of the texters posthaste. This isn't a typical theater, but one with tables so one can get decent food as well as decent beers. Text, and the ushers will be coming by to give the offender one warning, the second, they are escorted out, no refunds given.
What I've wondered about is using servers designed for power requirements at different times.
For example, server or blade "A" runs an Intel Atom and is made to be slow but energy saving. Server "B" runs much faster, but takes more electricity.
Add a SAN, cluster filesystems, and something like vMotion, and what can happen is that VMs that see heavy usage during the day can be moved to the higher speed servers as load permits. Then come evening, they get moved back to the slower processors, and the faster servers suspended or powered down. Some phones do this, with cores for low speed and high speed, moving tasks to a faster core as need be.
This. With the availability and reliability of SANs, virtual machine software, hypervisors, rack/blades, and such, there are a lot of tasks which are best moved to a rack/blades/SAN/VM architecture. Even high/extreme I/O can be handled by virtualization on POWER and SPARC platforms.
These days, for most tasks [1], the question is why not a rack/blade solution. A half-rack with a blade enclosure and a drive array oftentimes can do more than 2-3 racks of 1U machines.
Security separation is getting better and better. Even Microsoft is getting a solution out there that is good enough for prime time with Hyper-V in Windows Server 2012. IBM has had top notch separation (well, since the days of the 1970s and VMs on mainframes), Oracle as well.
To go "green", if a data center hasn't already gone with P2V, they should. There are always exceptions, but this is something to be considered.
This also helps with the next buzzword I'm hearing bandied about from the PHB types -- the SDDC, or software designed data center.
[1]: Ones that do not require specialized high-speed hardware like professional video capture. Of course, there are other tasks that require separation due to heavy I/O such as Netbackup servers. Then, there are servers that have to be separated for security or management reasons. For example, a SDMC for POWER boxes should be on discreet hardware for security reasons. Similar with the VM for vCenter management so it can be powered on and used even if the main cluster is inop.
Of course, having cheap, discrete hardware for large scale operations like Facebook makes rack/blades not as useful, but most data centers will benefit from the P2V move.
I've wondered why NEBS 48 volt systems are not more common. 48 volts is high enough that is doesn't need the big fat wires that 12VDC high-amperage connections do, and computers would just need a DC-DC converter to convert the incoming voltage to the 12 and 5 volt rail voltages.
It would be nice to see a standard 48 volt connector, something other than the one used for phantom power to mics. Preferably a connector with a built in high-amp switch (DC has no zero crossings so DC switches have to be beefy enough to handle the connects and disconnects at full amps.)
A DC-DC connector is less fussy than a rectifier, and without having to re-invert to AC (which has to be done by online UPS models), it is more efficient as well.
The problem is that the scumbuckets doing the calls have a lot of ways to easily thumb their nose at the FCC:
1: They use shell companies incorporated offshore. The FCC gets a big verdict, the company goes under, but the next day, another company is doing the same exact thing. All their equipment and workers are held and employed by secondary holding corporations (the details are all kept offshore), so the only thing lost might be a name.
2: With VoIP, it is trivial to forge numbers on Caller ID and run the shop from offshore.
3: There are so many DNC loopholes. Business "A" can rent out their mailing list, so business "B" can robocall at will, saying that due to the mailing list, they have a business relationship with the victim^Wcallee.
It is a very lucrative business because there is no real way for someone to block it and still have a usable phone. On landlines, there is no way to shut it off, as call blocking doesn't work on 800/888/866 numbers. iOS, one can use DND mode and only allow contacts (but it doesn't stop them from filling the voicemail up.) Android has Mr. Number which is a decent app, and uses a database of spammers/robocallers to deny calls with a busy signal.
Even if one has an insecure, but reliable service, that can come in handy, factoring in a threat model:
1: Before sending files to a cloud provider with an archival service, I use an archiving program, split the files up into segments (100-200 megs), then encrypt the segments with GPG and a decent passphrase. Not 100%, but it would force someone who manages to get access to have to try to compromise my endpoint or me (not hard, but it is a lot tougher than just passively guzzling out goodies.
2: TrueCrypt is a good enhancer for Dropbox. On Linux/Android, one can use EncFS as another way to securely store files.
Of course, sometimes one doesn't need cloud access to everything. I've found that in a lot of cases, I don't need to store all my archived data on Amazon Glacier. Instead, for most of it, a humble Blu-Ray burner and a utility like DVDisaster to add ECC to an ISO image is good enough for archiving data, especially if one does at least two copies of items, more for critical stuff. Encryption is easily provided, either file based using GPG or even raw OpenSSL, filesystem based using LUKS/TrueCrypt/FileVault, directory based like CFS, EncFS, or PhonebookFS, or archive based (winRAR, 7Zip, newer ZIP format, etc.)
Of course, this doesn't mean that one can forget about it once burned ott. Data should be archived onto two formats if possible, as one doesn't know if a batch of BD media might get a case of bit rot, or the hard disks one is using in a RAID array all get the same firmware bug and fail at the same time.
If I had a beefy server with a bunch of GPUs in it, so I can stream video graphics (similar to OnLive except running on the LAN), then for everything else, use the server with something like Citrix XenApp. That way, the desktop computer does relatively little work while the server is the machine that gets secured. Since most infections come from compromised websites, having the Web browsing done under Android will help reduce [1] the incidences of infection.
[1]: Not eliminate completely -- I've seen rogue sites which try to get the user to install a sideloaded package.
I have been seeing and reading about Android computers the size of a USB flash drive which can clip on a LCD monitor, and gets power from a USB cable.
I think in China and a lot of other countries, Android is a desktop OS, but other than a few models winding up on this side of the pond, I've not seen that many of these Android devices.
The brick through a window leaves an obvious signature, which makes life a lot easier when filing a police report and making an insurance claim on stolen goods.
A picked lock means (unless there is something obvious like major damage to the lock) that it is just my word with no evidence to back it up. Similar if the burglar is caught. A broken window will almost be a certain conviction. A picked lock can be explained away as the door was already unlocked, so a B&E charge would end up not being able to be prosecuted.
Copy of physical key's bitting dimensions + address info from a credit card. A remote intruder could download that, then sell lists of those to local gangs wanting some easy prey for home invasions.
Of course, there is the fact that if you want to buy a bump-resistant lock [1], it won't be something a key copying kiosk can copy easily.
[1]: I'm partial to Abloy's Protec2 Cliq line because it has the top tier mechanical pick resistance in addition to an electronic lock. Makes life easier to reprogram the lock to deny access just to the single lost key than have to rekey the lock and hand out new keys.
For Craigslist and other uses for a disposable number where I don't trust the other party, Google Voice is very handy. Just this use alone makes it worth having.
Correction, 1945 to 1946. This was a time that Western Europe was either going to figure out how to set member country differences aside or collapse completely.
I wish this were not the case. Maybe the US, Russia, and China need to do what European countries did in 1945 to 1945 and allow their students to travel freely among the nations. That way, the historic French/German hatred has waned to brawls at football matches and not trenches/tanks.
I probably sound crazy, but it might do good for an open border policy among the three superpowers. This doesn't mean that sovereignty has to be given up, just like Spain is still Spain, but at least the people in the country are not just seeing what is spoon fed to them in the press.
The 1946 decision to let Europeans wander among nations has done wonders for Europe... maybe we should consider the same thing here in the US?
I wonder how this law is to be enforced. If nothing is ever told that the breach happened (and logs "expired" pertaining to the breach), then only the party that did the intrusion would really have proof it ever happened.
General system logs don't have all the eDiscovery rules that E-mail do, and I sort of dread to have to keep every syslog/event log from every single machine for x amount of time, because an intruder can easily just trash the log archive server unless the logs were written something like WORM tape, or EMC's SAN that does WORM volumes.
In any case, this law is a start, and I wish similar laws would reach across the pond too. However, my fear is that even successful breaches will be classified as "attempts" and never reported... and if they are, it will be one person who gets the blame for failing to report it, they get sacked, and life goes on.
For something in the time periods mentioned, it is a good read, especially with the issues at the time.
I would say that crypto advances and computers go hand in hand, from the mechanical rotor devices to more advanced algorithms like DES, then to ones that have a larger bitsize and block size (AES.)
What will be the next big crypto advance is a next generation public key algorithm. RSA has been good, but it, DSA, and ECC can fall if a quantum computer of a decent size can be built. What is needed is a next generation public key algorithm, but those are a lot harder to come by than symmetric algos. What would be nice is an algorithm with a small key size like ECC (which since in theory a 256 bit ECC key is as secure as a 128 bit AES key), compared to 16384 bit keys for RSA.
Of course, the applied crypto part is important as well.
How about people just not just vote, but take the time to pay for the election fee and throw your hat in the ring? Why elect yet another clown when you can have your shot at a ringmaster, or at least a ringside seat?
Sounds stupid, but it would send a message at the minimum, and you might just win.
I understand going for another market because it is almost impossible to get into alternative energy in the US. In fact, were I a corporate officer, I would have just focused on having it be a facial lotion (anything that isn't related to burning the product), and not mention in public that the algae oil can be used as a fuel, so Big Oil with its elected official pets in tow doesn't pay the company a visit.
Then from there, work quietly on things like biodiesel and get with fleet makers.
It works without issue. I've used a BSD on and off since the days of Jolitz's 386BSD which came with a compressed image with a number of utilities on a 1.44MB floppy disk. Before this, if a person wanted source code to look at, they would have to pay a good mint to BSDI or a company like that... and of course, if you wanted SVR4 source... good luck with that.
Ahh... memories.
I wish there were some type of test suite that phone makers could offer to emulate their products, just to see if things run, and report exceptions thrown. That way, if I write an app, I don't get a bunch of one star, "FCs on my blahblah" reviews, on some device that I've never heard about (such as BLU phones which are extremely popular south of the US.)
That way, if one device did keep crashing my app, I can at least stick a warning about it.
Android fragmentation isn't as bad as people point it out to be. If worried about it, just set the bar to 4.0 or 4.1 and call it done.
Easy fix: Timestamp a list of document hashes of both the file and the file's size. For example, MD5 hash, SHA1, SHA2, and SHA3. One has might be forgable, but it will be extremely difficult for someone to make a new document of the same exact size, but have all the hashes match.
Using this method, the timestamper has zero knowledge of what is in the document, not even how big it is. All they can tell is if a subsequent document was the same as a previous one that went through their system.
It is good to have it still up as a resource. Multiple, independent timestamping services might be enough proof for something, although a judge and a jury will more likely look at a physical notary seal and a signature with more regard than even the best cryptography and secured atomic clock.