Category: Technology

The successor to DES encryption approved by the US National Institute of Standards and Technology is called AES.  The basis for AES is a wonderfully interesting block cypher called the Rijndael algorithm.  If you are interested in Rijndael or  block cypher encryption you can find out more about it here.   A great place to find brief outlines of several of the more common types of cryptography can be found here.  If you want to understand the basic structure of public key cryptography, this is a good place.

While I am on the subject of cryptography, let me post my public key information.  Anyone interested in secure contact with my can use my publicly listed 1024 bit DSA key (ID: DC430CA6).

This article is particularly relevant to me lately. I have been spending a great deal of time working on our database authentication infrastructure for Apache, IBM DB2, and mod_perl. Great article that gets your DB2/Apache setup working quickly.

How is your Perl skills? Check out this test and see how you stand.

Great article on Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC.) Its fairly basic but it does a wonderful job of covering the topic and even reviews (for those who have no cryptography experience) standard asymmetric cryptography. Like most software developers who work on transactional/financial software, I implement a good deal of cryptography in my applications. I found the article very straightforward and fairly simple to understand.

I have seen the future, and it is Genetic Algorithms. Here is some useful links concerning ID3 and C4.5 algorithm specifications. In addendum, some wonderfully useful information can be gleaned from the perl-AI mailing list.

For everyone who does not already know, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security is recommending Internet Explorer users find another browser. They specifically recommend Mozilla or a Foxfire, a Mozilla derivative. I have been trying to tell people this for a while. If you are still using IE, for the love of GOD, find yourself a real web browser. I have heard too many people say that the there is no longer any innovation in the web browser world. This opinion is absolutely true if you browser that has not been updated in almost 2 years (excluding the onslaught of bug fixes.) IE still does not properly support PNG’s, has ActiveX security holes the size of Texas, does not fully support DOM level 2, and has dozens of reported (but unfixed) rendering bugs. If you have not already done so, I recommend you try out the web browser recommended by Microsoft’s own Slate magazine.

There was a great article in my May issue of Linux Journal that talk about using RPM to do system rollbacks. Basically (if the feature is turned on) you can say “return my system software to the way it was XX hours (or days or months or years etc.) ago…” and RPM will downgrade or remove all necessary packages to return the computer to the state it was previously. Well I found the article on line and thought I would pass it along.

Cryptography is part of my work, a part time hobby, and (with my current reading list) something I do during my free time. So let me pass along some of my wonder.

I found a spectacular NOVA article on Enigma . Specifically how it worked. If you are interested in security in general then be sure to check out Cryptome. Its technical articles has be kinda “thick” at times but much of its information is useful for other purposes. And, because we all need to improve ourselves one way or another, here is Bred Miller’s Guide to Lock Picking.

A great article by Jeff Reifman has summed up what many of us in the tech industry have been seeing for the last year or two. Namely that Microsoft has lost is technological advantage because of its own size and protectionist tendencies towards its core markets. The rate of innovation comming out of Microsoft cannot even compare to that of Open Source development (in general) and internet technologies.

Any objectively minded business scholar will tell you this is not unexpected. All monopolies and almost all large corporations lessen in their ability to innovate because of corporate momentum. Its like turning a boat in the water. A small agile speedboat can turn much faster than a huge oil tanker. Small business, and businesses that must compete constantly, innovate at a much higher rate because their very survival depends on that innovation.

IBM Developer Works consistently has solid articles on application development and software engineering. Todays article covers best practices on J2EE development.