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User: mrphoton

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  1. Re:And this is a nearly unsolveable problem. on GSM Decryption Published · · Score: 1

    I just spent about an hour reading the discussion linked to on the above post [schneier.com]. It is truly insightful, and well worth reading if you have any interest in encryption.

  2. Re:And this is a nearly unsolveable problem. on GSM Decryption Published · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Some thoughts, the most terrifying phrase in the abstract was "'What he is doing would be illegal in Britain and the United States". I find these laws are very unscientific, they are effectively trying to hide _the_ truth. Which in this case is that the GSM encryption algorithm is shoddy. Secondly as a brit I find it very worrying when people justify draconian laws by saying other people do it. On to more technical things, the above post mentioned DES and AES, as I remember did EFF not build a 250k$ DES cracking machine some time back. I thought triple DES had now superseded DES. As for AES, according to wikipedia weaknesses have been found quite recently in AES. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Encryption_Standard. I don't understand how compromising these attacks are though (presumably very).

  3. Re:Should read on Man Tries To Use Explosive Device On US Flight · · Score: 1

    fantastic! you are a genius. However I think I can improve on it. Mandatory bacon sandwiches _and a free beer_ before boarding the plane. Everybody wins.

  4. translation on Simplifying Search For a Younger Audience · · Score: 3, Funny

    "He said that because Bing used more imagery than other search engines, it attracted more children. ..." translation: bing is for children who have not yet leant how to set the default search engine to google.

  5. Re:It's not the fines.... on Fines Fail To Curb Cell Phone Usage While Driving · · Score: 1

    one interesting fact I heard on a documentary recently is that around 1/4 of the cars should not be on london's roads anyway. Either no insurance, not tax, no driving licence, or the car has been stolen. So I think mobile phones are the least of the polices worries.

  6. Re:Christ, AGAIN!? on ARM-Powered Laptops To Increase Linux Market Share · · Score: 1

    I saw this windows CE netbook on sale in the UK: http://www.maplin.co.uk/Module.aspx?ModuleNo=257308 Maplin is an electronics/gizmo store, but I have seen one or two others on sale in medium sized chains. I has been on sale for a year or so so I guess it can not be doing too badly.

  7. Re:So in other words... on Network Adapter Keeps Talking While a PC Is Asleep · · Score: 1

    To be hoist, one of the main reasons I turn my office computer off when I go home is so it is not hacked by script kiddies at night - I don't think I need a non updating embedded linux system running all the time on my network.

  8. To put the stroy in context.... on UK Lifeguards Dig Their Own 100Mbps Fiber-Optic Link · · Score: 5, Informative

    You must remember that our national life boar service (RNLI) is a CHARITY and receives NO government sponsorship whatsoever. They get all there cash by collecting in the streets, collecting tins in shops and charity events... They are a truly amazing charity and save hundreds of lives . All there members are highly motivated volunteers who have ordinary jobs but when called upon drop everything and go and save lives what ever the weather. So my point is that it is not so amazing that they dug there own fiber link, they do after all maintain all there own kit and are out to save as much cash as possible because they don't have that much of it in the first place. http://www.rnli.org.uk/rnli_near_you

  9. Re:More geeky on Radar Could Save Bats From Wind Turbines · · Score: 2, Insightful

    may be the radar is cooking the bats and that is why he is finding less of them!

  10. Re:Whole Disk Encryption on Delete Data On Netbook If Stolen? · · Score: 1

    I have the same problem, I use fedora 10, on an samsung NC10 with an atom processor. I just ticked the encrypt file system box on the install. I do not notice any noticeable slow down due to the disk encryption overhead.

  11. For non UK readers some info on Warehouse or No, UK's Expensive Net Spying Plan Proceeds · · Score: 5, Informative

    Thought I would just put this in perspective for non UK readers:

    This is quite ironic because the politician Jacqui Smith who was backing this crazy plan. Justified the plan with logic such as if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear. Well.... last month she found out that this was true. Somebody leaked her expenses claims to the nation press it turned out that she had claimed for two porn films along with a load of other essentials for her house such as flat screen TVs which were of course essential for here to carry out her job. Oops.

    Secondly, the last few months and in especially the last week has been very bad for the government. It is generally agreed in both the left and right wing press that the government has totally lost the plot and is also losing control of its MPs. (there is talk of the ruling party splitting in two and senior ministers defecting) Add to this that the UK is in massive debt, and I mean massive. This means that after the next election (in 12 months time) the ruling party will most probably be out. The incoming party will HAVE to cut expenditure and things such as this mad project will be cut and all the employees fired. I can not wait!

  12. Re:Ranting against "evil Russians" to commence... on Small Nuclear Power Plants To Dot the Arctic Circle · · Score: 4, Insightful

    To be fair the Russians do not have a spotless record in nuclear health and safety. Or for that matter health and safety in any form.

  13. Re:Carputer on Options For a Laptop With a Broken Screen? · · Score: 1

    Sorry to disappoint you but as Tom Tom found out earlier this year computers in cars are already patented:
    Vehicle computer system with open platform architecture http://www.google.com/patents?id=_wIGAAAAEBAJ&dq=6,175,789
    Vehicle computer system with wireless internet connectivity http://www.google.com/patents?id=crt7AAAAEBAJ&dq=6,202,008

  14. Re:The 1980s called... on Europe Funds Secure Operating System Research · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    Along the same lines as the above post.... What a waste of my taxes. I am getting fed up of hearing about cash going to dubious research projects. There are some big problems to be solved out there for example reducing mans dependence on fossil fuels and reducing the damage they cause our planet. Why are we wasting cash on this dubious project?????

  15. Why not ask yahoo for a mirror? on Archive Team Is Busy Saving Geocities · · Score: 0, Redundant

    Why not just ask yahoo for an image of the site. They are going to shut it down anyway. So what value is a load of crappy web pages to them. They may be glad to send it rather than have a load of random web trawlers going over there entire web site.

  16. Re:Who needs to hunt down textbooks in Finland? on Copyright Lobby Targets "Pirate Bay For Books" · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Thank you Finish copyright police TTVK or who every you are. I had never heard of this service before. It sounds great and now I might just use it!

  17. Re:End of an era? on Swedish Museum Puts Pirate Bay Server On Display · · Score: 1

    I see what you are saying. As a scientist it iterates me a lot when a journal paper with a very important contribution to human knowledge is behind a subscription service I do not have access to. And why should I have to cough up 30$ for research which was probably funded by my government anyway?

    However, on a slightly different idea... Have you ever wondered what would happen to windows market share if cracked copies of windows and key gens could not be download from the internet. (i.e. a world where windows piracy was impossible or at least very hard) I doubt that all those people with hookie copies of windows would rush out and buy vista at the bargain price of 200$ or what ever it is these days. I expect it would give a huge competitive advantage to Linux and the other free OSes. So is piracy band for Linux? I think so.

  18. Re:Linux. on Zombie Macs Launch DoS Attack · · Score: 1

    How is this moded as funny. How many viruses do you know for Linux. I mean real viruses, not ones that somebody got going on one distro by disabling SElinux and typing in the root password twice. Real viruses like oh I don't know conficker for example. I can never see this happening on Linux because:

    1. If the software you download has been altered with some odd code, yum will pick it up because the check sum will be wrong.

    2. see above.

  19. Re:is the safest, most reliable OS we've ever buil on Vista Post-SP2 Is the Safest OS On the Planet · · Score: 1

    What? Are you kidding. Great security features like, oh I don't know autorun enabled by default. If they cared at all about security they would have removed that for a start. Before they start with fuzzy testing of the APIs the could just remove stupid features (like autorun) that allow script kiddies to write viruses.

  20. If the US won't break up microsoft... on Microsoft's Price Fixing Penalty, 9M Euros · · Score: 1

    I just wish the EU would take a harder line on Microsoft. Microsoft is not a European company,they are a monopoly extorting cash from EU citizens. Can you imagine if Ford was the only car maker in Europe. We would just not put up with it. I don't see why we should allow MS to import their products at all. At the very least we should impose very high import tariffs.

  21. Re:Vote /against/ Labour on UK To Train Pro-West Islamic Groups To Game Google · · Score: 1

    Yep all correct stuff, I can see no holes in your logic. And as you say there are some labour MPs who do back civil liberties. Diane Abbott is one, although I do not like a lot of what she says. The speech she gave in parliament when they were discussing detaining people for 90-days with out charge was fantastic. (can not find youtube link) If I lived in Henley I would consider voting for _her_. (i.e. not her party)

  22. Re:Once again I apologise on UK To Train Pro-West Islamic Groups To Game Google · · Score: 2, Informative

    This relay irritates me. Whenever somebody criticises Gordon and his dreadful Stalinist government, somebody always pipes up an says well the conservatives are no different and there is nothing we can do. Well for a start if you vote Conservative we will not get the dreadful ID cards: http://www.conservatives.com/Campaigns/ID_Cards_Labours_Bad_IDea.aspx

  23. Re:good idea but... on Use apt-p2p To Improve Ubuntu 9.04 Upgrade · · Score: 1

    When using bit torrent to download linux and my line has not been throttled. I usually download the image via bit torrent, then go to the fedora site and get hold of the check sum directly. Then check.... I am paranoid too.

  24. good idea but... on Use apt-p2p To Improve Ubuntu 9.04 Upgrade · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I had wondered for a while why yum and apt did not do this by default. It would seem a great ideal. However.... I recently tried to down load fedora 11 alpha via bit torrent using a BT internet connection in the UK. It worked great for about 10Mb (@90-100kb/s), then the download speed gradually ground to a halt. (5kb/s) When I tried a direct download of the same iso the speed bumped back up to a steady 100kb/s. I concluded BT was throttling my bit torrent connection of a legal download to a very slow speed.
    So my point is sounds like a great idea but if it is enabled by default it had better have some way to detect bandwidth throttling of p2p networks and revert to http transfer.

  25. Re:DOH! on COBOL Turning 50, Still Important · · Score: 2, Interesting

    That is so not true. Fortran is a very good very fast number crunching language. The inbuilt matrix functions and complex number handling is way better and smoother than C or C++. Plus the GNU compile collection now supports it. When you need to do lots of number crunching on a super computer fortran is not a bad choice at all.