Interesting Facts

Recently I came across this fascinating version of chess(passed on to me by my friend Karthikeyan). I didn't have an opportunity to play it. You need a different chess board to play it, but the concept itself is beautiful!3-way chess is a chessboard on which three people can play. The same rules apply except for some slight variation on moves made through the center of the board.



The regular chess rules are used, although the shape of the board is obviously different.



This is an empty board. Every player has 16 standard chess pieces.

The pawn moves as usual straight forward and takes enemy pieces one square diagonally forward.

The rook moves as always. Nothing new.

The knight is also no different from a standard knight.

Nothing new for the queen as well.

One peculiar feature: the diagonal in the center of the board.

General rules:

Having read Dan Brown’s work of DaVinci Code I got interested in reading Digital Fortress, especially knowing that it’s background theme is computers and cryptography. In DaVinci Code, most of the facts look to me like they are accurate, perhaps because I’m not an expert in any of the fields they touch (neither art, fossils or the Vatican situation). But I know something more about computers and I have always liked cryptography, and having read the book,I wanted to know whether the things mentioned in the book is true, I found some things which don’t really fit.

Plot summary(taken from wikipedia)

Susan Fletcher, a brilliant mathematician and head of the National Security Agency's (NSA's) cryptography division, finds herself faced with an unbreakable code named "Digital Fortress", which is resistant to brute-force attacks by the NSA's 3 million processor supercomputer dubbed "TRANSLTR". The code is written by Japanese cryptographer Ensei Tankado, a fired employee of the NSA, who is displeased with the agency's intrusion into people's privacy.

Tankado auctions the algorithm on his website, threatening that his accomplice "North Dakota" will release the algorithm for free if he dies. Tankado is found dead in Seville, Spain. Fletcher, along with her fiancé, David Becker, a skilled linguist and a Professor, must find a solution to stop the spread of the code.

The plot looks really fine,but the informations in this book are not really fine.Some of these things are what we could call “artistic licenses”, where the author has invented something which doesn’t really exist so the novel is interesting, but others are factual errors which look like Dan didn’t get really documented about it. And it’s a pity, because he says two ex-NSA cryptographers contributed to the book and they should know much better what they were talking about.

WARNING: For those who haven’t read the book and have the intention of doing it, this contains all kind of spoilers.

“The notion of a rotating cleartext function was first put forth in an obscure, 1987 paper by a Hungarian mathematician, Josef Harne. Because brute-force computers broke codes by examining cleartext for identifiable word patterns, Harne proposed an encryption algorithm that, in addition to encrypting, shifted decrypted cleartext over a time variant. In theory, the perpetual mutation would ensure that the attacking computer would never locate recognisable word patterns and thus never know when it had found the proper key. The concept was somewhat like the idea of colonising Mars—fathomable on an intellectual level, but, at present, well beyond human ability.”

Although the mentioned mathematician didn’t really exist we could try to believe in the concept of rotating-cleartext but this doesn’t stand. So, an algorithm which produces data that variates over the time so you can’t know whether you got the real data or not. OK, then how does the intended receiver know the data? He will need something more (taking in consideration that this could really work), like the time when it was encrypted and the current time. These will be simply more bits in the keyspace to be brute-forced, so you can always find the original content.

Susan had learned about the Bergofsky Principle early in her career. It was a cornerstone of brute-force technology. It was also Strathmore’s inspiration for building TRANSLTR. The principle clearly stated that if a computer tried enough keys, it was mathematically guaranteed to find the right one. A code’s security was not that its pass-key was unfindable but rather that most people didn’t have the time or equipment to try.”

OK,I never knew there was one such principle, (maybe another invented name). It seems nobody has ever heard about Bergofsky Principle outside this book and for a reason(I spent lot of time in searching about it). It says “mathematically guaranteed to find the right one”, but it would be only correct if it said “mathematically guaranteed to test the right one”.

That is the concept behind brute-force: try all the possible keys, so it’s sure one of them will be the correct one. The difficult part is how to know if the one we tested was the correct one. But, let’s talk about One-time pad, an encryption algorithm “which has been proven, from theoretical first principles, to be unbreakable when properly deployed”.

It works because the key-length is the same as the length of the data, so a lot of different keys will give results which might look like plausible. From a message encrypted with this algorithm you can find the original text you want simply by variating the key used. So, when trying to decode one of this messages TRANSLTR is guaranteed to test the correct key, what is not guaranteed is to be able to know it’s the correct one.

“Susan had created, in effect, a directional beacon disguised as a piece of E-mail. She could send it to the user’s phony address, and the remailing company, performing the duty for which it had been contracted, would forward it to the user’s real address. Once there, the program would record its Internet location and send word back to the NSA. Then the program would disintegrate without a trace. From that day on, as far as the NSA was concerned, anonymous remailers were nothing more than a minor annoyance.”

There’s no way the tracer can work with the current state of e-mail. E-mail is just data, not executable, so the user is the one who has to execute it, it can’t execute itself to know where it is and even less make itself disappear. The only way something like this can work is with web bugs, attaching a link to the email which will be visited when the recipient receives the email and opens it, but it needs the cooperation of the recipient and can’t delete itself (well, maybe if there’s a bug in the e-mail software used to open it, highly doubtable) .

“She knew mutation strings were programming sequences that corrupted data in extremely complex ways. They were very common in computer viruses, particularly viruses that altered large blocks of data.”

This really doesn’t make any sense, so I’m considering it simply another artistic license. Even Dan himself doesn’t seem to know what he wants to represent with mutation strings, so even less do I.

“After we make the switch,” Strathmore added, “I don’t care how many pass-keys are floating around; the more the merrier.” He motioned for her to continue searching. “But until then, we’re playing beat-the-clock.”

So Strathmore’s intention is to replace the file with Digital Fortress code with an altered version of it with a backdoor so the NSA can read all messages encrypted with it. But, what if someone downloaded it previously? He will be able to get the original version without any backdoor, so the plan completely fails. Even more, he can get also the other version with the backdoor, so he will be able to compare both and find the backdoor in it.

“Now Susan was even more doubtful. Encryption algorithms were just mathematical formulas, recipes for scrambling text into code. Mathematicians and programmers created new algorithms every day. There were hundreds of them on the market—PGP, Diffie-Hellman, ZIP, IDEA, El Gamal. TRANSLTR broke all of their codes every day, no problem. To TRANSLTR all codes looked identical, regardless of which algorithm wrote them.”

When he says scrambling text into code I hope he’s not meaning executable code. But, what I don’t like about this paragraph is that he confuses different kinds of algorithms: public-key (El Gamal) and private-key (IDEA), with encryption systems, like PGP which uses the other two in combination to work. PGP is not an algorithm and neither is ZIP, this is a compression system, which can, optionally, encrypt the data, originally with a propietary protocol and nowadays using AES, an standard for encryption. (I searched for these stuffs in wikipedia and google).

““I don’t understand,” she argued. “We’re not talking about reverse-engineering some complex function, we’re talking brute force. PGP, Lucifer, DSA—it doesn’t matter. The algorithm generates a key it thinks is secure, and TRANSLTR keeps guessing until it finds it.””

Susan says the TRANSLTR can find the key even if it doesn’t know what algorithm was used. This is impossible, as you need the algorithm to test whether the key works or not. “Four-bit alpha groupings,” she puzzled. “They’re definitely not part of the programming.”

PFEE SESN RETM MFHA IRWE OOIG MEEN NRMAENET SHAS DCNS IIAA IEER BRNK FBLE LODI

Sorry, Dan, but a bit is either 0 or 1, so these are not four-bit alpha groupings. These are simply 4-character groups, where each character (if using standard codification) uses 8 bits.

“Primes were the fundamental building blocks of all encryption algorithms”

Sorry, but no. There are a lot of encryption algorithms which don’t use prime numbers as its basis, and to put it easy I’ll repeat myself in the example: “one-time pad”.

“Public-key encryption was a concept as simple as it was brilliant. […] The only way to unscramble the message was to enter the sender’s “pass-key”—a secret series of characters that functioned much like a PIN number at an automatic teller.”

Sorry, but again: NO!. this is not how public-key encryption works. If it was better explained it would be how private-key encryption works. But Dan, you need to read the Wikipedia and not say this kind of things.

“With a few quick keystrokes, she pulled up a program called ScreenLock. It was a privacy utility. Every terminal in Node 3 was equipped with it. Because the terminals stayed on around the clock, ScreenLock enabled cryptographers to leave their stations and know that nobody would tamper with their files. Susan entered her five-character privacy code, and her screen went black. It would remain that way until she returned and typed the proper sequence.”

Five character passwords in a computer managed by a NSA member? Not long enough to be credible. The most paranoid of my friends use twenty characters passwords, so I imagine NSA should use something a bit longer than 5 chars. (I myself use 10 character passwords mostly...)

Oh, and Greg manages to install a keylogger in all these computers, so I should say the system operator is not very efficient in keeping the systems secure. At least, lock the computer case inside a box so nobody can access it directly.

To finish this list, how did they plan to decipher the Digital Fortress code if they didn’t have the decryption code? OK, you get the passkey but you need the decryption code, which is encrypted with itself. Mmmm, a no-no…

Let’s get with the errors not related to computers.

In one chapter the assassin Hulohot transmits the message "SUBJECT: P. CLOUCHARDE - TERMINATED", but in another chapter the list of messages reads "SUBJECT: PIERRE CLOUCHARDE - TERMINATED". I am not sure whether this error appears in other editions of the book.(It appeared in my edition).In wikipedia it is said that the information about Seville,Spain were wrong.(I am not too sure about it)

Inspite of all this, I should say I did enjoy reading this wonderful book as much as the DavinCi Code from Dan Brown. His success lies in his art of mixing truth with fiction and making you believe that the fiction was true.If you are not an expert in cryptography then this book is definitely worth a read.

Answers:



Don' worry.....I didn't pass either......

They have found popeye's mum!!!!!

Here she is.....

A small touching story mainly for professionals...

A man came home from work late, tired and irritated, to find his 5-year old son waiting for him at the door.

SON: "Daddy, may I ask you a question?"
DAD: "Yeah sure, what is it?" replied the man.

SON: "Daddy, how much do you make an hour?"
DAD: "That's none of your business. Why do you ask such a thing?"
the man said angrily.
SON: "I just want to know. Please tell me, how much do you make an
hour?"
DAD: "If you must know, I make Rs.100 an hour."
SON: "Oh," the little boy replied, with his head down.

SON: "Daddy, may I please borrow Rs.50?"

The father was furious, "If the only reason you asked that is so you
can borrow some money to buy a silly toy or some other nonsense, then you march yourself straight to your room and go to bed. Think about
why you are being so selfish. I work hard everyday for such this childish behavior."

The little boy quietly went to his room and shut the door.
The man sat down and started to get even angrier about the little
boy's questions. How dare he ask such questions only to get some money?
After about an hour or so, the man had calmed down, and started to
think: Maybe there was something he really needed to buy with that Rs.50 and he really didn't ask for money very often. The man went to
the door of the little boy's room and opened the door.
"Are you asleep, son?" He asked.

"No daddy, I'm awake," replied the boy.
"I've been thinking, maybe I was too hard on you earlier" said the
man.
"It's been a long day and I took out my aggravation on you.. Here's the
Rs.50 you asked for."
The little boy sat straight up, smiling. "Oh, thank you daddy!" He
yelled.
Then, reaching under his pillow he pulled out some crumpled up bills. The man saw that the boy already had money, started to get angry
again. The little boy slowly counted out his money, and then looked up at his father.

"Why do you want more money if you already have some?" the father grumbled.

"Because I didn't have enough, but now I do," the little boy replied.
"Daddy, I have Rs.100 now. Can I buy an hour of your time?

Please come home early tomorrow. I would like to have dinner with you."

The father was crushed. He put his arms around his little son, and he begged for his forgiveness.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It's just a short reminder to all of you working so hard in life. We should not let time slip through our fingers without having spent some time with those who really matter to us, those close to our hearts.

Do remember to share that Rs.100 worth of your time with someone you love.

If we die tomorrow, the company that we are working for could easily replace us in a matter of days.

But the family & friends we leave behind will feel the loss for the rest of their lives. And come to think of it, we pour ourselves more into work than to our family.

Open notepad and type this:
i=msgbox ("Warning a virus has been detected on your PC. Press YES to format your hard disk now or press NO to format your hard disk after system reboot",20,"Warning").Then save it as Virus.VBS and go to the folder that contains it and open it if a window pops out saying a virus has been detected it's working. Press yes or no to close the window and put it in the startup folder of the victim's account.On startup the window should appear.

Note:

This does not harm your computer as it does not contain virus.The Yes and no button does not do anything except closing the window. And you can edit the virus in the sentence: Warning a virus has detected on your PC to any kind of virus eg.Trojan Horse like this i=msgbox ("Warning a Trojan horse has been detected on your PC. Press YES to format your hard disk now or press NO to format your hard disk after system reboot",20,"Warning").And in between make sure your victim does not panic and really reformat his harddisk.

If error reporting in XP is bugging you then turn it off.

When a system error occurs in XP, a little dialog box appears asking if you want to report the error to Microsoft.

To disable error reporting, follow these directions:

1. Right-click My Computer and choose Properties.

2. Click the Advanced tab on your System Properties dialog box.

3. Click the Error Reporting button on the Advanced tab.

4. Place a checkmark next to "Disable error reporting."

5. Leave the other radio button unchecked next to the text labeled, "But notify me when critical errors occur."

6. Click OK.

Hope you loved this useful post!!!!

Motion Portrait is a cool digital animation technology that allows an ordinary digital photograph of a face into a living 3D animation. It works by automatically recognizing the eyes, nose and mouth and animating these creates a whole range of emotions that can be manipulated.



Uses of Motion Portrait could be for avatars, games and advertisements (e.g. how you would look with different hairstyles). More animated demos can be found here and here.

1 videoclip of Motion Portrait application follows....

Article idea:http://www.hemmy.net/2007/11/04/motion-portrait/

Steps to block websites fom you computer.....
1] Browse C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc
2] Find the file named "HOSTS"
3] Open it in notepad
4] Under "127.0.0.1 localhost" Add 127.0.0.2 www.orkut.com , and that site will no longer be accessable.
5] Done!

Example :127.0.0.1 localhost
127.0.0.2 www.orkut.com

- www.orkut.com is now unaccessable

For every site after that you want to add, just add "1" to the last number in the internal ip (127.0.0.2) and then add like before.

IE:
127.0.0.3 www.yahoo.com
127.0.0.4 www.msn.com
127.0.0.5 www.google.com

This also works with banner sites, just find the host name of the server with the banners and do the same thing .

Hope this small tutorial could keep you going in simple way of blocking websites.

Article idea:http://computerlords.blogspot.com/2008/03/block-websites-without-any-software.html

The flight which collided WTC was Q33N.

In notepad type Q33N ,change font size to 72 and font to Wingdings.I tried this one out and I was really amazed by what I saw!

This is what I saw!!!!

A friend of mine in the mechanical department introduced his classmate named Premanand with the tag "The scientist of our class".I wondered why he is calling him so....
But after speaking for about 10 minutes with him I understood he is indeed a scientist.
He has discovered a new force named Iota force!!!
Now you may wonder what the hell is Iota force....
First we must brush up with Kepler's laws of planetary motion to understand this Iota force.

The second law attracts the attention....
It states that"A line joining a planet and the sun sweeps out equal areas during equal intervals of time."

How is this possible???

There are a few things that can be done in times of grave emergencies. Your mobile phone can actually be a life saver or an emergency tool for survival. Check out the things that you can do with it:




Emergency

The Emergency Number worldwide for Mobile is 112. If you find yourself out of the coverage area of your mobile; network and there is an emergency, dial 112 and the mobile will search any existing network to establish the emergency number for you, and interestingly this number 112 can be dialed even if the keypad is locked. Try it out.

Have you locked your keys in the car?

Does your car have remote keyless entry? This may come in handy someday. Good reason to own a cell phone: If you lock your keys in the car and the spare keys are at home, call someone at home on their mobile phone from your cell phone.
Hold your cell phone about a foot from your car door and have the person at your home press the unlock button, holding it near the mobile phone on their end. Your car will unlock. Saves someone from having to drive your keys to you. Distance is no object. You could be hundreds of miles away, and if you can reach someone who has the other 'remote' for your car, you can unlock the doors (or the trunk).
Note: It didn't work fine! I tried it out and it did not unlock my car!

Hidden Battery Power

Imagine your mobile battery is very low. To activate, press the keys *3370# Your mobile will restart with this reserve and the instrument will show a 50% increase in battery. This reserve will get charged when you charge your mobile next time.
Note: This too didn't work fine!

How to disable a STOLEN mobile phone?

To check your Mobile phone's serial number, key in the following digits on your phone * # 0 6 #
A 15 digit code will appear on the screen. This number is unique to your handset. Write it down and keep it somewhere safe. When your phone get stolen, you can phone your service provider and give them this code. They will then be able to block your handset so even if the thief changes the SIM card, your phone will be totally useless. You probably won't get your phone back, but at least you know that whoever stole it can't use/sell it either. If everybody does this, there would be no point in people stealing mobile phones.
Note:This works well!



Hope you enjoyed reading this post!!!!

Captcha is an acronym for Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers And Humans Apart and are used to prevent automated software from spamming the website. A captcha has an algorithm to show different new challenges which requires real human intelligence to solve. However some captchas goes beyond the normal point and to some extent proves to be too difficult to solve and some are just downright hilarious.

Article idea:http://www.hemmy.net/category/internet/

BTS - Base Transceiver Station (Antenna)
BSC - Base Station Controller
MSC - Mobile Switching center
HLR- Home Location Register
VLR - Visitor Location Register
SMSC - Short Message Service Center

When a user sends an SMS, the request is placed via the MSC. The MSC forwards the SMS to the SMSC where it gets stored. The SMSC queries the HLR to find out where the destination mobile is and forwards the message to the destination MSC if the destination mobile is available. If the mobile is not available the message gets stored in the current SMSC itself. In most installations If a mobile is not available for SMS delivery the SMSC will not retry. Instead the destination MSC will inform the SMSC when the mobile comes back in range.SMS handling is a store and forward operation unlike USSD.

SMS has got a validity period, for which it will wait for the destination mobile to the available. After that time the SMSC will delete the message. The validity period can be set by the user. Normal validity is 1 day.

Article idea:http://www.kenneyjacob.com/2007/06/19/how-sms-works/

Bermuda make 13 ... and lose in four balls
South Africa 15 for 0 beat Bermuda 13 by ten wickets



Bermuda's women carved an unwanted niche in the international record books with one of the most abject performances in the game's history. In their opening match of the World Cup Qualifiers at Stellenbosch University, they were bowled out for 13 and then South Africa took only four balls to sweep to a ten-wicket win.

Bermuda's men haven't made much of a positive impact in the game either - eleven months ago, they conceded 413 for 5 against India in the World Cup and lost by 257 runs, the biggest margin in one-day history. But their women have just lowered the bar by several notches.

They crawled to 7 for 2 after ten overs, but that represented the high-water mark. By the time drinks were taken after 15.5 overs they were 13 for 7 and had lost their 42-year-old captain, Linda Mienzer, for a determined 1 off 48 deliveries. Such was the confusion that when play resumed the batsmen returned to the wrong ends.

The last three wickets failed to add to the score as Sunette Loubser finished with 6 for 3, including 5 for 1 in 12 balls.

Terry-Lynn Paynter opened Bermuda's attack but struggled to find the cut strip, conceding nine wides and a no-ball. Olivia Anderson did manage to reach one, which she dispatched for four.
The statistics of the match are mindboggling. Eight Bermudans failed to get off the mark, and the three that did only managed a single each. Ten of the runs that helped make up their meagre score were extras - 71%. South Africa's score of 15 for 0 was also made up of ten extras - nine wides and a no-ball. Anderson scored 50% of the runs scored off the bat in the match, and 80% of her side's runs.

Unfortunately for South Africa, but mercifully for the record-books, Bermuda's debacle does not count towards the official statistics because they are ranked outside the world's top ten countries. "I am disappointed that today's stats don't count for nothing," said Loubser, "but I would say it was a team effort to win the opening match of the tournament.

Bermuda's captain, Mienzer, tried desperately to put a positive gloss on the performance. "I am extremely proud and our team is very proud to be here," she said. "Just a year and a half ago there was no women's programme so we went to Canada and qualified to come here which is an achievement in itself. In terms of women's cricket in Bermuda, it has come a long way but we still have a long way to go."

Hmmm....What a captain???
Scorecard

The coolest easter egg i have ever seen is the the one in winamp....
Try it....

1. In WinAmp 5.0, click on Options then on Preferences (or simply press Ctrl-P).
2. Click on the Input option under Plug-ins (these are on the left side of the window).
3. Click on Nullsoft NSV Decoder 1.02
4. Click on about.
5. Double click on the box with the llama picture in it.
You can keep double clicking for different effects...