jtchau.com

Interesting to read in this article that according to this research group, to construct this MD5 attack would take 32 years worth of CPU cycles of a typical single core desktop PC. But they completed it (the rogue CA cert) in 3 days using 200 PlayStation 3 game consoles in parallel. Basically the special hardware the PS3 used to provide super fast graphic makes each PS3 equal to 40 PC’s in complex number crunching.

This research group plans to publish in first half of 2009 the details of the latest improved algorithm they have used. However they estimate that other experienced research groups should be able to construct the same attack in a month by info in this article and public research results already published in 2007 by other research groups.

http://www.win.tue.nl/hashclash/rogue-ca/?ap1=rcb

Microsoft had sent out this response when this latest finding about MD5 was announced in a security conference in Berlin end of 2008.

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/advisory/961509.mspx

In priesthood lesson Br. Court Hilton the teacher today pointed out that this fee has remained at $10 from Kirtland time to the present. $10 back then is equivalent to $140 today.

http://www.crn.com/security/212700354

security researchers from the U.S., the Netherlands and Switzerland presented findings for an exploitable vulnerability in the MD5 cryptographic hash function during the Dec 27-30 2008 Chaos Communication Congress in Berlin.

Last year around this time when I was in Paris my friend introduced me to this French new year tradition. Saturday I was able to visit the French Bakery in north Provo before we left Provo. I bought a $28 King Cake for Buffie to share this tradition with her friends.  The one from Paris was from supermarket and cost lots less. The Provo one should be much tastier.  Check out this article on the tradition to see which way you would like to treat the person whose piece of cake contains the trinket (a small ring for the Provo one), just search King Cake or Galette de Rois in google e.g.:

http://www.askoxford.com/languages/culturevulture/france/galette/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_cake

Cheryl who worked with me till I moved to my current job. She grew up in France. She said that the trinket used to be something edible. But since often the treatment of the finder of it was to sing or to buy a round of drinks for the crowd, the finder often preferred to eat the bean and not tell anyone. That is why now it is made of something not edible so the finder has to “spill the bean”.

Buffie let us know how things turn out.

We made it back to Denver in good time 1-9:15pm yesterday. Based on noaa.org info the first half of the trip through Rawlin would be better than the second half. As we got latest updates road condition info from Josie it still sounded so. Given that that first half turned out to be only-one-lane dry at best we were bracing for needing to stay overnight at Rawlin or at best Laramie. The updates were punctuated with phrases like blowing snow and slick. There were plenty flashing signs on the roads that said the same thing. When it got dark around 45 miles west of Rawlin it became difficult to see by eyes alone how the road condition is.  We had to also gauge the real road condition by how fast other cars could travel.  We soon found that the road was quite dry. There was just a 3-mile section west of the wind farm at Arlington that had some want-to-be blowing snow. We were thus able to make very good time on the second half of the journey,  average speed of 75mph, much better than 65mph for the first half.

We of course were very glad to arrive Denver a little after 9pm. But it surfaced the sad state of affairs with things nowadays. Apparently government agencies that were supposed to monitor and report road conditions must have left their posts and allowed flashing digital road signs become totally outdated, same for the similar info on their web sites. We believed weather conditions on this section of I-80 must have been quite bad half a day ago: when there was still day light, along the first 200 miles stretch we saw at least four tow trucks retrieving cars that were upside down by the road sides, some on the west-bound and some east-bound sides.

This morning concern the work ethics of the general populace a thought came to me about a writing named “A message to Garcia” by Elbert Hubbard in 1899. He wrote this stirring short article after dinner one day allegedly to shame his son into taking better care of the family publisher business. Elbert has been a successful publisher and the article became such a hot item in the format of a book (or actually a pamphlet) in the ensuing years. It was made into a silent film first and then a talkie film in 1936. To date it is the 5th most circulated publication in the world. Funny that other than the most which is the Bibles, the other 3 are of dubious distinction. - one was Mao’s Little Red Book, one was by the Jehovah Witnesses… In today’s work environment it would be hard to introduce such a fiery comments on work ethics. But at one times it was widely used as inpirational reading in companies, and it was issued to every USA military officers in both world wars.

Take a reading (for the first time or again) of it. There are lots of people no longer believe it has a place in modern day life. But there are still people who view it inspirational. I was introduced to it over 15 years ago in a Dale Carnegie training class Bell Labs sent me to. The class actually was the thing that changed my mind to go for a management job instead of staying as a practicing engineer.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Message_to_Garcia

http://courses.csail.mit.edu/6.803/pdf/hubbard1899.pdf

Let me know your thoughts on what was said in it.