stern - Slashdot User

Submission + - Fossil of 8 foot sea scorpion discovered (newscientist.com)

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stern

on Wednesday November 21, 2007 @12:46AM

stern writes: "The fossil remains of a giant claw have been found in Germany. Scientists believe it came from a sea scorpion 8 feet long, about 390 million years ago. I appreciate we are supposed to save the environment and all, but sometimes you have just got to thank God for extinction. Deeply distressing illustration available at http://www.newscientist.com/data/images/ns/cms/dn12941/dn12941-1_351.jpg"

Submission + - Using Google to crack MD5 passwords. (lightbluetouchpaper.org) 2

Submitted by

stern

on Tuesday November 20, 2007 @12:15AM

stern writes: "A security researcher at Cambridge, trying to figure out the password used by somebody who had hacked his website, ran a dictionary through the encryption hash function. No dice. Then he pasted the hacker's encrypted password into Google, and Shazzam — the all-knowing Google delivered his answer. Conclusion? Use no password any other human being is ever likely to use for any purpose, I think."

Submission + - Simplist Universal Turing Machine Has Been Proven (wolfram.com)

Submitted by

stern

on Friday November 16, 2007 @03:56PM

stern writes: "Five months ago, Stephen Wolfram announced a contest to prove that a two state, three color Turing machine was universal (which is to say, that it could simulate any other Turing machine, regardless of complexity). It is known that no 2,2 universal machines exist, so the 2,3 machine, if it could be proven universal, would be the most simple possible universal machine.

A 20 year old English student found the proof in only five months, and Wolfram has awarded him $25,000 for his trouble."

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