Sounds to me this is more of an approach rather than a specific implementation. TFA talks about specific data types, such as credit card numbers and passwords. Reading between the lines, it seems like something that would be set up with input from a knowledgeable system administrator or hard-coded for a specific purpose; password manager is specifically mentioned.

So you write this program such that the data type information is not part of the encrypted data but explicitly provided as (for instance) a map that corresponds to valid password characters. After the algorithm is run on the encrypted data, you simply write the computed output to an integer value, and convert to ASCII using the aforementioned map (or, as you've mentioned, compression scheme). Similar methods are used to scale certain random number generating functions to any particular number range. This way, any binary dataset can be converted to text, but whether it's the real data or not is impossible to guess because it's by definition valid ASCII text. You're then free (as the user) to XOR the raw binary with whatever key your algorithm produces based on the master password typed by the user in order to produce the stored value.

Since I am not an expert in this field, the fact that it seems pretty trivial to me probably means either it's not new, and therefore not newsworthy, or there's some detail here that makes it special in some arcane way or niche application.

And they really have no excuse to plead ignorance in my opinion. A comment on a related Slashdot article linked an article indicating Mikko Hypponen, "chief research officer" of F-Secure is friends with these guys. You'd think these issues have come up once or twice in conversation.

--Agatha Heterodyne

I don't know if she was the first source for this, but it's a fun series to follow, for those who don't know :-)

Nevertheless the smithies used to manufacture and maintain the mining equipment (not to mention all other other goods produced with the mined ore) burn lots of carbon, probably coal. That's as big an oversight as the fact that so much diesel is burned in the production of ethanol that it's still worse than just putting gasoline in your commuter car.

Your statement therefore is: myopic

What about stem cells, taken as an embryo, but that can be used later on the then-grown adult? I daresay it's the best of both worlds. Doesn't apply to us participating in the thread right now obviously, but why shouldn't it be possible in a decade?

That is unless, of course, the adult stem cells are equally as useful as the embryonic ones, but even so I'd worry about radiation-induced genetic copy-errors as I get old. So, keep the "original" genes pure in some ultra-hardened bio-vault. Hell, keep the line alive and grow me a new body every 30-40 years or so; sounds like a future I'd want to survive to see. But we need to test it to find out if the adult-stem cells really are just as good for a multitude of purposes (and for those of us that didn't get the biopsy in pre-birth checkup), and for that we need at least a control group of embryonic cells to test with.

Wow. As much as I liked the TED talks the guy gave that put him firmly in the anti-NSA camp, I wonder what his scruples say about this potential conflict of interest (considering how much info Angry Birds sends back to the mothership...). If you weren't already at +5 I would mod you up.

Money's a bad consideration. Death Row inmates cost more than regular life-sentence inmates to house.

I've found the correct response is, "You've got it all wrong. It's not the dress that makes you look good, it's you that makes the dress look amazing."

What, can't be bothered to do a Repair Install? Sure, it's not a silver bullet and it takes longer than SFC, but it works great most of the time, and at least in XP you could do it without having to fully boot to the installed OS. I've found SFC to be fairly useless in 7 as well.

Of course, if I ever have to press F6 to load a driver from a floppy disk again, it will be too soon.

Probably because there's no power source to drive the device over a standard ethernet connection. A powered data cable that can capture keystrokes vs. a network cable that captures whole packets and must contain some kind of SOC that would need some kind of wireless power or a tiny lithium battery and frequent swapping isn't nearly the same level of feasibility or usefulness.

Also consider the horrendous difficulty of getting through automated HR scanner processes. You have to win Buzzword Bingo, and then you have to be matched to a position the company is actively looking to fill.

That's a nerve-wracking experience in the best of times; however, if you've got somebody inside the company actively tracking your application status and staying on the HR people not to let it fall through the cracks, that's a big benefit to your sanity and your chances of successfully landing a new employer.

Wii controller being what it is, I thought there was more call for military grade televisions.

I'll get my coat.

I can't believe nobody else has mentioned this. This is probably half the NSA's fault, for making proper security in any context very difficult (the other half of course is the SCADA manufacturer's fault for not building good security in from the factory). NSA wants juicy secrets from a few international groups, and thereby exposes our entire infrastructure to international malice. It's as simple as the tipping point where the engineer/manager says "Well all the security products available suck anyway, might as well save my budget and the hassle of another network middleman."

Ahem.

See also: Roving Bug

This just in: Alienware machines are overpriced.

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