I was wondering about this. The fact that SSNs tend to follow a pattern would surely make them an easier target of cryptoanalysis. Even just knowing the format would cut down on the keyspace you had to search by a large margin wouldn't it?

I take 12 different medications multiple times a day for a chronic kidney condition. Fortunately i live in the UK so get unlimited supplies for £100 a year otherwise not dying would bankrupt me.

Yes but a) assuming your password file is invulnerable is stupid otherwise we would all just use plaintext, b) multiple rounds are great but tbh only exist because the current crypto algortihms are so fast so you have to multiple cycles to slow crackins and c) salts are great but if you have a fast algorithm factoring that into your cracking process isnt impossible. TBH though most of these issues boil down to the fact that MD5 and SHA are stupid algorithms to use for encryption and if you take the encryption uses of the algorithm out of the equation then faster SHA is great for file integrity checking.

Wasn't there an article recently complaining that the speed of SHA made it relativly useless as a hashing algorithm to protrect passwords? Surely the increase in speed would have a greater effect on cracking speed than on the speed of legitimite authentication.

Ive seen this news story a few times today on different sites and im as baffled as you. If im downling from somewhere like piratebay i tend to just sort by seeds and see which is popular then read the comments. Just because theres no automated way to weed out the fakes doesnt mean its impossible to find what your after since the crowd sourcing approach means that the best options tend to float to the top.

This requires the person you are messaging to not only have gmail chat etc, but that they are also running it currently. Its is much more likely that they will have their phone on that them having their phone on and having the required program open. The advantage of text messaging is that its pretty much ubiquitous amongst mobile phone owners. The one thing this discssion has shown is the effect that the stupid plans and pricing that is common in the us has had on people opinions of SMS. Over here in the UK text messaging is usually cheap enough to be considered free. I have unlimited texts on my prepay phone with no contract and so use them when i want to quickly send somone some infomation which i dont need an immediate response on or that im sending from somewhere that would make a voice call difficult (or irritating to the people around me)

A book is a terrible thing to use this approach on. It takes me all of 30minutes at most to read a chapter assuming its a long one. Then your gonna make me wait a month or so for another one. Theres no way im gonna bother reading a book like that in such a stop start manner. It does work for games though as there have been a few successful episodic games.

It isnt though. When you buy the disc you get the game and 2 maps say. This is the bit that is an item and the bit you can transfer under first sale. With the game though you also get "free" access to a "service" which allows you to download another 10 maps. Now because its a service it doesnt need to be transferable. While im not saying i approve of what they are doing i cant see it violating first sale (although if they already have the 10 maps on the disc and restrict access to them for anyone except the first person to use it i can imagine that as being a possible violation)

Especially since as we wait for SSD prices to drop and capacities to increase the size and price of rotating media is going to improve at the same time. The way i see it SSDs will eventually become what people use for their os and on portable devices and rotating drives will remain as large mass storage devices.

Anyone remember when snakes on a plane got a massive budget increase due to all the talk about it on the internet then pulled in very little at the box office.

No the way it works is it syncs your saves into the steam cloud so you have your local copy then if you want to play on another computer you can just continue off your cloud save. Its pretty much the way steam saves your settings on certain games (like the half life series) but taken to a new level.

Wait when the world is ending and all the matter is being sucked into a black hole your really going to need somone to call you and tell you its happening?

Bit torrent? It pains me to see the book companies making the exact same mistake that music companies made when digital distribution of the format started becomming mainstream.

Im an eve online player and the client and expansions are all free. They claim its all included in the subscription.

Star trek slash fiction and free coffee?