No Panacea

Many times I get questions on the use of DES/3DES/AES/IDEA versus other block ciphers. I try to explain the differences in performance, and strength of each cipher rather than saying a is better than b. In regards to the US, there as a CNSS Advisory Memorandum issued March 2005 that speaks to the military use of DES and 3DES (”Advisory Memorandum on the Retirement of Data Encryption Standard (DES) Based Cryptography to Protect National Security Systems“)

Here are the key points:

• DES is to be retired (and Triple DES using ONLY one key)
• Triple DES using two keys to be retired by 2008
• Triple DES using any mode to be retired by 2015

The report does not mention the use of the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) or any future retirement dates on it.

Verizon has hit a slam dunk with the VZ Navigator service on the Samsung SCH-u620. I’m usually a pessimist of any service provided by wireless companies as it’s generally too expensive and not worth the money. However, with GPS I make an exception. If you travel a lot or just generally get lost and don’t want a bulky GPS device in your car; this is pretty much for you. The VZ Navigator software allows you to download maps, get directions, or points of interest with a couple finger taps. The GUI is pretty intuitive, it also saves previous searches, and has a capability to enter a home address, so you can route back to “home base” pretty quickly. The GPS receiver on the phone works well and haven’t had any problems with it in three cities I’ve tried (Pittsburgh, Dallas, and Los Angeles). The service is priced at roughly $10/month–no contract etc. So the choice is either to choose buy a GPS without the service fee (a fixed cost of $250 to $500) or use the one available on your phone; The break even point is somewhere between two to four years if you’re looking at service based versus buying the equipment and mounting it to your car. Given that there are road updates and perhaps soon the VZ service might have traffic updates (I hope) I’m a happy customer of the cell GPS. Any thoughts or experiences for other people?

Disclaimer: I am a proud Verizon (VZ) shareholder (who wouldn’t be, have you looked at their stock lately)

LibriVox is a project in readership that parallels the principles of open source software. The site has over 600 audio recordings of books and documents that are completely free and legal (in the public domain). It glides close to the open source model because it is volunteer based, takes in no revenue–describing itself as “independent, non-commercial, volunteer, non-profit project.” Essentially the democratization of information in digital format. This has interesting implications for those that want to be educated but cannot read (a paradox to some). Audio files can be downloaded in MP3 or ogg format and listened to on any device that supports those formats (anything from a iPod to a laptop–that’s right no DRM). The selection has readings of the most prominent documents that form the basis of US history and democracy.