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Comment Re:Still overpriced (Score 2) 330

Agree. The best thing for these devices is land fill. They have no purpose existing.

The hardware is interesting; it's the OS (Windows RT) that's sinking it. If we could figure out how to install something else, the device might get a new lease on life.

You can jailbreak it. XDA Forums have a list of apps recompiled for it. You can also run powershell and .net apps.

Comment Re:Encryption is easy. Key management, not so much (Score 1) 127

Not using IDEA is a good call.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Data_Encryption_Algorithm#Security

"As of 2007, the best attack which applies to all keys can break IDEA reduced to 6 rounds (the full IDEA cipher uses 8.5 rounds).[1] Note that a "break" is any attack which requires less than 2128 operations; the 6-round attack requires 264 known plaintexts and 2126.8 operations.
Bruce Schneier thought highly of IDEA in 1996, writing, "In my opinion, it is the best and most secure block algorithm available to the public at this time." (Applied Cryptography, 2nd ed.) However, by 1999 he was no longer recommending IDEA due to the availability of faster algorithms, some progress in its cryptanalysis, and the issue of patents.[5]"

Pedantry aside, I *so* know what you mean.

Comment Re:NIMBY (Score 1, Interesting) 436

Here in the UK we enjoy almost uninterrupted mains power. No brownouts (a brownout perhaps every eight months which is usually due to maintenance, extreme weather or emergency works), no requirement for external generators nor for a UPS for your desktop PC.

I understand that the power supply in the US is patchy at best, with frequent brownouts. I think you guys really do need a stable source of power. Nuclear is a good way to supply this. Focusing on renewables won't begin to replace this, nor will it give an easily modulatable power supply that reacts to user demand. Sure they take a long time to build, and there's legislation preventing waste processing being done that would wring out more power from the same uranium. So you end up with large waste disposal sites where you wastefully allow spent rods to decay needlessly. That's assuming you still are building old-style reactors. Newer ones have much less waste, more power and frankly are less dangerous.

Gas Power? Coal Power? Great, Cheap to build but pollute like crazy. Not to mention coal burners actually more radioactive than nuclear power. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste

Solution lots of smallish pebble-bed nuclear reactors to do the heavy lifting, augmented with solar, with the odd gas & coal power stations taking up the slack.

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