"Its like they are daring us to revolt."

Two weeks from now the streets of NYC are going to be an interesting place. It might be the most significant display of politically driven action our generation has seen to date. Crazy amounts of emotion, for better or worse, are bubbling up all sharing the same focal point. I expect both the best and the worst our generation has to offer.

My own personal non-violent protest will most likely come in the form of drinks at the Molly Wee, if I can get anywhere near it...

Sinfest 8/18/04

] Eli Biham announced new results in cryptanalyzing SHA-1,
] including a collision in a reduced-round version of
] SHA-1. The full SHA-1 algorithm does 80 rounds of
] scrambling. At present, Biham and Chen can break
] versions of SHA-1 that use up to about 40 rounds, and
] they seem confident that their attacks can be extended to
] more rounds. This is a significant advance, but it's
] well short of the dramatic full break that was rumored.
]
] Where does this leave us? MD5 is fatally wounded; its
] use will be phased out. SHA-1 is still alive but the
] vultures are circling. A gradual transition away from
] SHA-1 will now start. The first stage will be a debate
] about alternatives, leading (I hope) to a consensus among
] practicing cryptographers about what the substitute will
] be.

Answer, not a 5 alarm fire, but if you write or maintain cryptography code you can still expect some work coming up.

Followup on SHA-1 break

] During the demonstration of the Sequoia machine last
] week, the machine worked fine when the company tested
] votes using an English-language ballot. But when the
] testers switched to a Spanish-language ballot, the paper
] trail showed no votes cast for two propositions.

] "It was our fault for not proofing the Spanish language
] ballot before demonstrating it," Charles said. "We had
] a demo ballot that we designed in a hurry that didn't
] include all of the files that we needed to have the
] machine present all of the voter's selections on the
] screen and the printed ballots. That would never
] happen in an election environment because of all the
] proofing that election officials do."

A lack of QA might pick our next president.

Wired News: Wrong Time for an E-Vote Glitch

] Effective with this sentence, Wired News will no longer
] capitalize the "I" in internet.

Don't expect the AP to update its style guide.

Wired News: It's Just the 'internet' Now

My last PGP key has expired. Here is one for the next two years.

-----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----
Version: GnuPG v1.2.4 (Darwin)
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=yxTQ
-----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----

] The Business Software Alliance (BSA) has announced an
] "anti-piracy" site, with a kids' mascot ferret, and a
] contest to call it a name.
]
] The BSA weasel creature reminded me of something I'd seen
] before. Something shady, disreputable, criminal. Finally,
] I remembered! The BSA weasel looks like he's a member of
] a criminal gang in Walt Disney Comics, the "Beagle Boys":

via BoingBoing.

Infothought: BSA Weasel == 'Beagle Boys'

] The UN imposes all sorts of penalties on all those who
] contradict its religion. It issues documents and
] statements that openly contradict Islamic belief, such as
] the International Declaration for Human Rights,
] considering all religions are equal, and considering that
] the destruction of the statues constitutes a crime...

This is long but its interesting. Someone extracted emails from a computer stolen from Al'Q and posted them in The Atlantic. Details about some of Al'Q's codes are discussed, as well as an interesting inside look at their operation. (The statues were the buddhist monuments destroyed by the Taliban in the late nineties.)

Emails from Bin Lauden

My email is working again.. Sorry if you had been trying to get in contact with me.

Can you tell? (I got 13/16).

Female or She-Male?

] Hydan steganographically conceals a message into an
] application. It exploits redundancy in the i386 instruction
] set by defining sets of functionally equivalent instructions.
] It then encodes information in machine code by
] using the appropriate instructions from each set.

Hydan: Information Hiding in Program Binaries