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User: Argilo

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Comments · 25

  1. Re:Random jackass whines about nonsense on David Pogue Calls Out 18 Sites For Failing His Space-Bar Scrolling Test (yahoo.com) · · Score: 1

    It's not just about the spacebar. On those sites, the page down key doesn't work correctly either.

  2. Watch out for Uncle Ben's on Kodak-Branded Smartphones On the Way · · Score: 3, Funny

    Kodak is going to face some stiff competition from Uncle Ben's! http://www.theonion.com/articl...

  3. Re:How are people affected in their day to day liv on New OpenSSL Man-in-the-Middle Flaw Affects All Clients · · Score: 2

    Firefox uses NSS, not OpenSSL.

  4. Re:Whatever happened to codec2? on Interview: Ask Bruce Perens What You Will · · Score: 1

    Bruce talks about the current state of codec2 in episode 139 of Ham Radio Now. You may also want to look at FreeDV, which you can use today to experiment with codec2 on the air.

  5. Re:Need a summary of the summary on Mathematicians Team Up To Close the Prime Gap · · Score: 1

    In fact, thanks to Bertrand's Postulate, we can be certain there are millions of primes between those two.

  6. Re:Modest changes on Canadian Government Scrapping Internet Predators Act · · Score: 1

    The Canadian Senate has very little power and influence. And in any case, the Conservative Party currently holds a majority in the senate, making it very unlikely that the Senate would attempt to block a bill passed by the House.

  7. Re:Might be on to something. on Startup Uses Radiation Fear To Map Cellphone Coverage · · Score: 1

    Coverage Mapper is doing some of what you describe.

  8. Re:A Little More Perfection on New Largest Known Prime Number: 2^57,885,161-1 · · Score: 2

    We also know that all even perfect numbers must have the form 2^(p-1) * (2^p - 1), where 2^p - 1 is a Mersenne prime. It's not known whether an odd perfect number exists, but we at least know that there are none less than 10^1500.

  9. Re:Why 2^n-1 on New Largest Known Prime Number: 2^57,885,161-1 · · Score: 2

    It is far easier to test Mersenne numbers for primality than general integers, thanks to the Lucas-Lehmer primality test. Weeding out composite Mersenne numbers by trial factoring is also faster, thanks to a theorem that eliminates most of the candidate factors.

    As for numbers of the form 2^n+1, it's easy to show that if 2^n+1 is prime, then n must be a power of two. Such numbers are known as Fermat numbers, and there is also a fast primality test (Pepin's test) for numbers of this form. But because of the power of two in the exponent, each Fermat number is double the size (in terms of the number of digits) of the previous one. It doesn't take long before you exceed current computing capabilities. And so far, all the Fermat numbers we've managed to test have turned out to be composite, apart from the first five. Furthermore, it is conjectured that there are only finitely many Fermat primes, so it's possible we've already found them all. On the other hand, it is conjectured that there are infinitely many Mersenne primes.

  10. Re:SHA isn't encryption. on Ask Slashdot: Is SHA-512 the Way To Go? · · Score: 1

    I think you meant Quantum Computing. Quantum Crypto already exists and in no way threatens the security of classical crypto.

  11. Re:Arbitrary Code Execution on iPad Left Vulnerable After Record iPhone Patch Job · · Score: 1

    Indeed, it's pretty much the whole point of jailbreaking. :-) And as far as I know, the some of the jailbreaking tools exploit arbitrary code execution vulnerabilities to do their job.

  12. Re:screen on Keep SSH Sessions Active, Or Reconnect? · · Score: 1

    Actually a Diffie-Hellman key over a prime field can be broken in about the same time as a similarly sized RSA key using, for example, the index calculus algorithm. The amount of computation required to break a 2048-bit Diffie-Hellman key is about 2^112, not 2^1024.

  13. Re:I'm not special anymore on With New SDK, VoIP Over 3G Apps Now Working On iPhone · · Score: 1

    There are still plenty of reasons to jailbreak: high-quality Youtube videos over 3G, video recording on pre-3GS devices, unix utilities, a flashlight app that sets the screen to maximum brightness, the ability to run any C64 game on Manomio's emulator, plenty of apps that aren't available in the app store...

  14. Re:And I thought... on iPhone Straining AT&T Network · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Just jailbreak, unlock, and buy a prepaid SIM card in the country you're visiting. I used a couple hundred voice minutes and 2GB of data while in Bulgaria and it only cost me about $60. The jailbreak/unlock process is quite simple these days.

  15. Brighter than iridium flares? on ISS To Become Second Brightest-Object In the Sky · · Score: 1, Redundant

    Will it be brighter than iridium flares, which can reach an apparent magnitude of -8.0?

  16. Article is out of date on NIST Announces Round 1 Candidates For SHA-3 Competition · · Score: 5, Informative

    The article is already out of date. The round 1 candidates were announced back on December 11. Since that time, 11 candidates have been broken. For the latest information, I recommend visiting the SHA-3 Zoo.

    Also, the article suggests that candidates will continue to be broken quickly, but I doubt this will happen. The weak hashes will be broken quickly, but there are likely to be many strong candidates which will not be broken during the contest. Other factors (speed, simplicity, etc.) will determine the ultimate winner.

  17. Re:Well duh... on Researchers Crack WPA Wi-Fi Encryption · · Score: 1

    With proper crypto, your "matter of time" will be billions of years or more.

  18. Re:Vote Skew on Canada Election Result Bad News For DMCA Opponents · · Score: 1

    I can't speak for all advocates of proportional representation, but I've supported it since long before the right was united. Also, there are plenty of people pushing for proportional representation at the provincial level (referendums have been held in BC, PEI, and Ontario) where the political situation is different. I'm not convinced that the united right has brought about a surge of interest in PR.

  19. Re:Hard to argue with the general point. on Schneier Calls Quantum Cryptography Impressive But Pointless · · Score: 1

    Even if quantum computers become a reality, we won't necessarily need to switch to quantum crypto. Classical symmetric key algorithms will remain secure (although key lengths will need to be doubled) and there are classical public key algorithms which are believed to be secure against quantum attacks.

  20. Re:no h-j-k-l? on Slashdot Discussion System Updates · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Or even better, just make it configurable. For Dvorak users, w-a-s-d is useless.

  21. Re:Hide the evil code? on 2008 Underhanded C Contest Officially Open · · Score: 2, Informative

    MD5 is reversible only if you know in advance that the input value was chosen from a relatively small set of possibilities. The recent attacks on MD5 do not reverse it; they just find "collisions", i.e. pairs of inputs that hash to one and the same value.

  22. World record on Using Distributed Computing To Thwart Ransomware · · Score: 1

    Factoring a 1024-bit RSA modulus would be a major achievement. The current record seems to be 663 bits.

  23. Re:Is this really necessary? on Fujitsu HDD with AES 256-bit Encryption · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Encrypting in hardware rather than software has some security advantages. Keys can be kept out of main memory, preventing cold boot attacks which have been used to break Linux's software encryption. Also, software encryption can be more vulnerable to side channel attacks such as cache timing attacks which have also been successful against dm-crypt.

  24. Re:Fingerprint scanners suck. on Fingerprint-Protected USB Sticks Cracked · · Score: 1

    How about a fuzzy extractor?

  25. Re:Not looking forward to this on YouTube to Host Presidential Debate · · Score: 1