* Posts by Destroy All Monsters

16005 publicly visible posts • joined 3 Jun 2008

How much did NSA pay to put a backdoor in RSA crypto? Try $10m – report

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Facepalm

@VernonDozier: What the hell am I reading?

So RSA was born as a commercial product, that used some of the PGP technology.

Wrong. RSA was sitting on its patents and unable to monetize the stuff properly (not to mention being hindered by ITAR and COCOM.)

Zimmermann wanted to use the RSA algorithm in PGP. But it was patented. So he finagled the fact that basically someone at RSA said over a beer that he could build an implementation. (Building an implementation is not hard to do; we did it at school). Then someone exported the code as a printout to Norway and Finland to be "legally in the right" about that as I remember. End of story.

These were interesting times. Also the times when Clinton wanted to get into your phone via Clipper chip and "key escrow" retardation.

I remember reading an article in Scientific American from the early 1990s, where IBM said they had the technology to develop CPUs that run up to 4GHz using RISC technology

Must have been very simple CPUs (like, a few trransistors) using experimental GaAs or Josephon Junctions. "We are doing it in the lab" is not "You can have it at the retailer".

Parallel processing makes it more difficult to brute-force decrypt.

LOLWHAT. Brute-force decryption is "embarrassingly parallel" problem.

My guess is that computer speeds plateaued as a result of Government intervention

Time for bed, Mulder!!

See also: RSA Company History

See also: PGP history

MailOnline pulls recipe site after innocent young cookbook DEFILED

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Re: As usual, el reg dodged the real question

They may either go up or down. It is difficult to say.

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Holmes

How is Lybia anyways?

Lybian cyber-hijackers ... bragging about their conquest

Must be the after-effects of all that viagra distributed by Ghaddafi for RAPE, as detected by the truthy Susan Rice.

Google: Surge in pressure from govts to DELETE CHUNKS of the web

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"Big Business" would sell you anything. That is the point of it.

"Government" is angling for votes no matter what the cost. If need be, they serve you a soup spiced with disgusting red and brown pieces of stale shite then tell you it is for your best while asking you to pay for it. That is the nature of government.

You know what you want.

[In the beginning, people] demanded inexpensive liquor, tobacco and consumer goods, clean women and a chance to win a fortune; and our ancestors obliged them. Our ancestors were sneered at in their day, you know. They were called criminals when they distributed goods and services at a price people could afford to pay. ... They had what they called laissez-faire, and it worked for a while until they got to tinkering with it. They demanded things called protective tariffs, tax remissions, subsidies — regulation, regulation, regulation, always of the other fellow. But there were enough bankers on all sides for everybody to be somebody else's other fellow. Coercion snowballed and the Government lost public acceptance. They had a thing called the public debt which I can't begin to explain to you except to say that it was something written on paper and that it raised the cost of everything tremendously. Well, believe me or not, they didn't just throw away the piece of paper or scratch out the writing on it. They let it ride until ordinary people couldn't afford the pleasant things in life. ["The Syndic" by C.M. Kornbluth]

'F*** off, Google!' Protest blockades Google staff bus AGAIN – and Apple's

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Big Brother

Re: bad side effect of a generally good thing

I don't know whether putting one's fetishism about how "things should like" onto a housing market raped mercilessly by the fetishism of the "everyone should own a house" housing bubble is the way forward.

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Terminator

"Anti-gentrification"? What??

Seriously, WTF is with the stupid level of those people?

My only hope is that they will be first through the meat cleaver once AIs pump out the HK drones.

They and their dumbass Che Guevara Tees.

Jeez. move to flyover country if so needed.

Worried OpenSSL uses NSA-tainted crypto? This BUG has got your back

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Black Helicopters

Gaius Baltar in your server room etc.

> It is a rare example of a software screwup that has beneficial side-effects.

Oh yeah?

Someone may have known something.

Parents can hide abortion, contraception advice from kids, thanks to BT's SEX-ED web block

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Re: Legality

For a fee!

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Devil

The coaltion demands that...

Clearly not the "Coalition of the Willing", then?

Clearly we need less buttered corn on the cob for more flexibility. Err... yes ...

Ex-Microsofties face 20 years in slammer over insider trading

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Re: buy low, sell high?

A "market" is not a zero-sum game. The whole point of a market is that EVERYONE is better off.

Is the stockmarket a zero-sum game? It is difficult to decide with all the new money from nowhere rushes into it from everywhere. Maybe it is just a way to get a piece of the pie. Of course, the stockmarket in its current form turns to frank buccaneering when the raging exponential collapses, so you better get out early.

More here: How the Stock Market and Economy Really Work

Mosquitoes, Comets and Vampires: The de Havilland Museum

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Holmes

Mosquitos in "Tintin": Good memories.

Anyone remember the use of Mosquitos bought off a war scrap dealer by an unnamed sand kingdom to wipe out Tintin trundling through the desert on camelback?

Luckily a miscommunication causes the Mosquito to attack the sand kingdom's armored battalion instead in a 1958 blue-on-blue incident, so our hero lives to see another day. Amazingly, no-one of the armor grunts seems to get killed either.

Italy's 'Google tax law' could fall foul of EU discrimination rules

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Big Brother

Re: "stopping the so-called double Dutch and Irish sandwiches": Not quite

This is the age and time where 15% VAT is regarded as "unfair" and 30% income tax is "low" and where politicians are looking for hidden cash pots all over Europe to keep their promises about the voters' good life going for a few hours more. Apparently they believe that "the rich" have huge stashes of euro bills in Uncle Scrooge-style bunkers - instead of owning factories and commerce that provide MUH JOBS.

I'm awaiting the righteous bloodying of Jewsspeculators and hoarders and talk of nationalizations as well as harsh penalities for "antisocial" entrepreneurs any minute now.

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Mushroom

Keep your stinky fingers off productive capital

Supporters have claimed that the measure could add at least a billion euros a year to the coffers, a much-needed cash injection for the country, which has the second-highest level of debt in the EU after Greece.

These supporters are the people very near the state: taxfeeders, cronies, mafiosi and assorted parasites.

A "cash injection" for a bottomless pit of incompetence and graft is not a "measure" - it is utter waste.

It is not a coincidence that before hiding under the kimono of the Eurozone (thus effectively performing trans-european socialization of its debt problems), the lira underwent serial devaluations.

Crooks target Target: 40 MILLION bank cards imperiled in cyber-heist

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Re: Insider Job?

It's called "cash", though with the "war on cash" by our administrative overlords (not averse to kicking in doors to verify 'provenance' if the sum reaches 4 digits), it has become a bit dangerous.

Never mind software-defined HYPE, 2014 will be the year of REALLY WEIRD storage boxen

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Re: Nonsense! LTO-6 now, upcoming LTO-7 and LTO-8

Obama will just outlaw them.

Problem solved.

Fedora 20 Heisenbug makes ARM chips 'a primary architecture'

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Complexity is now going through the roof

Goddammit!

I'm currently getting owned by systemd. WHY!

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Re: Heisenbug?

But Gnome 3.10 will collapse your stuff, so it's all good.

Macbook webcams CAN spy on you - and you simply CAN'T TELL

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Re: So, it can be done....

These days: Genius == Able to do more with a computer than read Facebouque

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Black Helicopters

Pretty sure the next thing will be motherboards with various "pressure sensors" needed during "testing" that someone "forgot" to remove during the production run. And which just happen to be queryable from WebGL libraries.

Yeah.

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Thumb Down

Re: So?

HERPERS DERPERS! YOU A GENIUS!

Oracle: Our figures say hardware has flatlined, but we assure you it hasn't

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Analysts will analyze, film at 11

> Cisco ... you're missing the point.

What is the point?

> The financial markets look to Oracle as a bellwether of the health of the IT industry

The "financial markets" are made up of clowns that need to clown lest the music stops.

For me all this just means that in an bubble atmosphere of the worst sort anything can happen and random interpretations can be pulled out of random arses.

We also may have Oracle cannibalizing its own customer base for a last hurrah but this is yet another problem.

Oi, bank manager. Only you've got my email address - where're these TROJANS coming from?

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Trollface

Re: Well, after I used the RAC's recovery service

Glad you didn't respond. Their services must seriously hurt.

Feminist Software Foundation gets grumpy with GitHub … or does it?

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The fact that the Ada programming language has been named after a clearly oppressed member of the female side of humanity, cruelly exploited by patriarch Babbage and even today belittled as his "sidekick" and a "dilettante" is itself a sign of the oppression. In this case, males typically apply obfuscation to cover up subconscious guilt at the creation of a formulation and machinization of militaristic thought the use of which is the control of inherently chauvinistic killing machines. Do not be deceived!

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An unsolvable decision problem

Feminism is a self-satire of know-nothing princesses trying to cook up up an inedible mix of both victimization and juvenile omnipotence fantasies at the same time, porked up with freudian jargon and if need be random words of marxist cant.

As was the case of Sokal's hoax about postmodernist thinking, it is à priori undecidable whether anything coming from that corner is serious or not.

Want to be a better CIO? Get a twenty-something to show you the ropes

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Re: Young whippersnappers

The Japanese Kohai-Sempai system has its uses....

"Much to learn, grasshopper!"

On the other hand, it is even more unsettling when the young ones are even more conservative than oneself or are beholden to technical lore valid 15 years ago.

Suffering SPITZER! Boffins discover Milky Way's MISSING ARMS

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Re: Mostly Harmless

Yeah, the anal probing has seen a serious uptick around here the last fifteen centuries.

What is the Galactic Empire doing about that??

WIN YOUR OWN HADRON COLLIDER pop-up book with El Reg

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Re: Eligibility

So say we all.

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Re: Pissing up the wall man

You wouldn't like cosmic urine rays ripping your DNA to smithereens.

Please be civil!

James Bond's 'shaken not stirred': Down to trembling boozer's hands, claim boffins

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one lonely beer on five days each week

AUSTERITY HAS GONE TOO FAR!

Resellers, distributors - your countdown to oblivion starts NOW

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Re: Profit and value-add...

An arbitrageur makes a profit (he wouldn't do it if he didn't think he has a better than even chance of making a profit), but doesn't actually add value.

Whether merchants, speculators and "arbitrageurs" provided a "valuable economic service" under the watchful eye of God has been extensively discussed during the middle ages.

The general consensus was yes....

Don't listen to Snowden ... Intel: We've switched on CPU crypto for Hadoop

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Re: Bollocks, say I.

Belgium is NATO, right? Belgium is part of America! Everything is part of America.

ALERT! Fling that fiery HP Chromebook 11 charger back at Google

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Coat

Oh Rachael!

Do Androids start a fire while you sleep?

(No wait, it's a ChromeOS)

Microsoft's cloudy chief: Azure reliability knocks your own kit for six

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Re: When all your eggs are in one azure coloured basket . .

Every imperial mothership has escape pods!

Factories are too DULL for Google's robo-dreams: Behold the GATAMAMs

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Pint

Re: Optional

As long as they are STRONGER than the gaggle of politicians currently trying to open a PORTAL to HIMMLER'S BUBBLE UNIVERSE HOLIDAY RESORT, they can have all the fluffy cat stroking they want.

Unlocking CryptoLocker: How infosec bods hunt the fiends behind it

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Pint

mcvax!moskvax!kremvax!chernenko

In Putin's Russia, encryption uses you!

Sensation: Chinese Jade Rabbit FOUND ON MOON

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Holmes

Re: Most

Life would by like a manly Perry Rhodan novel!

And hopefully not like that PKD story, "The Man in the High Castle".

But you must note that the US had Goddard (ignored) and the Soviets had Korolev (sent to the gulag to mine coal until death until there was a sudden impressive need for expertise).

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Pint

Re: "Jade Rabbit" what a name !

Pass the mind bleach please.

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Headmaster

Thanks Obama!

Still when China set up their permanent moon base next year, plant a flag and claim it as a new territory, Mr. Obama can sit back and satisfied remembering the day he cut NASA funding.

Oh, so Obama cut back NASA and ate YOUR MOM's apple pie?

You can fault Obama for a lot but a cutter he ain't. He has the full power of the printing press behind him.

Proposed NASA Budget Cuts Spark Bitter Debate in Congress

A NASA authorization bill drafted by the Republican majority of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology proposes to slash NASA's funding to $16.6 billion for 2014 — $300 million less than it received in 2013, and $1.1 billion less than President Obama requested for NASA in 2014. The bill — which authorizes spending levels but provides no actual funding — would roll back NASA’s funding to a level $1.2 billion less than its 2012 budget. Democratic members of the committee spoke strongly against the proposed cuts, which Republicans say are necessary under the federal sequestration cuts prompted by the Budget Control Act of 2011.

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Re: Communist nations 2, Capitalist nations 1

The commies are now the USA:

MUH SPENDIN'

MUH PENTAGON SPENDIN'

Holy shit, there was some laissez-faire under all that lard, I am sure....

Yahoo! boss! Mayer! sez! soz! for! lengthy! mail! outage!

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Trollface

She said that they encountered a "particularly rare" problem

There was a huge black swan blocking the entrance.

Avago Technologies chomps up LSI for BEELLLIONS - in CASH

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Trollface

Leveraged Buyout Tyme!

As is the custom, done on friday so that one can hit the funhouse early.

Striking Amazonians warn: Don't rely on us for Christmas pressies

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Paris Hilton

Re: Tip of the iceberg

I thought the delivery companies were in the business of doing exactly that?

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Holmes

Whatever happened to "Sod that, Imma changing muh job"?

No changing jobs anymore? Oh well.

"The union wants Amazon to use the collective bargaining agreements in the mail order and retail industry in the country as the basis for how it pays its workers. But the mega etailer insists that its employees are from the logistics sector and are paid above-average wages for that industry."

I can't comment about the "above-average wages" but for me they are definitely in the logistics sector. If they were retail or mail order one would see them or speak to them. No such thing occurs.

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Thumb Down

Re: So that's why they're moving to Poland

Please explain where Amazon is in the dock about taxes.

That Google ARM love-in: They want it for their own s*** and they don't want Bing having it

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Black Helicopters

Re: Google

Or they are going for the True AI route under cover of contextual ad serving.

Munich signs off on Open Source project

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Re: And then

> An excel spreadsheet full of macros comes in by email to the senior auditor.

The company sending it didn't read the specification.

Buh-bye, end of contract.

"The customer is always right."

"The customer wants non-Microsoft-locked-in stuff."

"DEAL WITH IT!"

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Holmes

Re: €30 million @Chemist 09:18

Who cares about savings. You could save by cutting down the german administrative fervour. Has any comparative study been done on what savings that would bring?

But in this case, having more control, down to the actual source, over the system that you are working with daily instead of being beholden to a US-based guy throwing chairs and changing strategic direction on a whim who is also trying to shaft you to keep up with the stockmarket bubble? Worth every Pfennig.

Cambs prof scoops $3m Fundamental Physics prize

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Headmaster

For those in the orbit of the current raging debates

There was some discussion about this on Prof (not boffin) Peter Woit's blog

2014 Milner Prizes

Last March an Oscar-style ceremony hosted by Morgan Freeman was held in Geneva (see here) to award the 2013 $3 million Milner Prize to Princeton string theorist Alexander Polyakov. Tomorrow an even more lavish ceremony designed to turn “Oscars of Science” into instant multi-millionaires will be held in Mountain View, California (see here). It will feature Kevin Spacey, Conan O’Brien and Glenn Close, one of whom will presumably award the 2014 $3 million Milner string theory Prize to either Polchinski, Green/Schwarz, or Strominger/Vafa.

Milner-Zuckerberg Prizes for Mathematics

At the Hollywood-style awards ceremony last night for $3 million string theory and biomedical research prizes, it was announced that Yuri Milner and Mark Zuckerberg will now start funding something similar in mathematics, called the Breakthrough Prize in Mathematics. ... I’ve written extensively about the “Fundamental Physics Prize” and what I see as the worst problem with it (heavily rewarding and propping up a failed research program). While many physicists are privately unhappy about this prize and its effects, few prominent ones are willing to speak publicly with their name attached, since this kind of mouthing-off could turn out to be personally extremely expensive.

NSA alleges 'BIOS plot to destroy PCs'

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Flame

Re: It's called the 9/11 Rule:

The more so because "9/11" had nothing to do with "connecting dots", it had to do with FBI infighting (moles being shut down out of pure spite and bureaucratic put-downs at the right moment) and possibly shenanigans about covering up a long-running deal with a mobster hitman.

No technical system is going to help with that. Unless you get all the stupid out of the system and give everything to AIs.