PGP is 15 years old

PGP Corporation salutes the 15th anniversary of PGP encryption technology. Developed and released in 1991 by Phil Zimmermann, Pretty Good Privacy 1.0 set the standard for safe, accessible technology to protect and share online information.

PGP is used for encryption and signing of content, but it is under utalized on the internet. For a while I used it to sign my email messages and other communications. This is a good opportunity to go look at PGP again and check out what all has been updated and is new.

From what I did digging for finding PGP software, the Authoritative source for PGP software is http://philzimmermann.com The other sites that have related information are http://www.openpgp.org and http://www.pgp.com and for the international people http://www.pgpi.org

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Escape Pod: The Shoulders of Giants

Just listened to EP078: The Shoulders of Giants by Robert J. Sawyer from Escape Pod, and I just loved the story. I actually listened to the story twice on my daily commute. It is a story about a colony sleeper ship who was headed for Tau Ceti, where they hoped to colonize the planet there. Their travels took them 1200 year, and by the time they did get there they were greeted by a thriving community from earth. They were honored as being among the giants that helped the community actually get there and expand. The end of it puts a new perspective to life and accomplishments that can be made.

Timeline and Risk: How to Piss Off Your Software Developers

Today we're going to focus on a sentence that will make almost any developer, even a mild-mannered one, want to box up their red Swingline and head to Tahiti for early retirement.

This Article hit the issue squarely on the nail, and I couldn't agree More! The Classical Pyramid of Time, Cost and Quality still hold true today, and that good developers already are giving +100% of their time and effort to their job.


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Buffer Overflows and Security

Buffer overflows and security are very common topics these days and Dr Dobb's just ran an article on it Illusion of Safety. They also ran a follow up article on The Unsecured Integer. The first article presents two options which can be used to prevent buffer overflows brute force and prevention by design. Brute force requires some form of verifying that all incoming data is verified for length before copying with problematic functions. Prevention by design pushes the responsibility to verify that the data doesn't overflow to the edges of the system and has the possibilities to make applications simpler, smaller and run faster, but it requires that each data flow be traced and verified. Preventions is harder to enforce than the brute force method but provides possible efficiency improvements.

One other related article Integral Security . There are 3 variants on integer errors overflow, sign errors and trundication. They reference a special publication 500-262 from NIST as a reference for how to handle Integer Safety.

Also of interesting note they referenced Secure Coding in C and C++, by Robert C. Seacord which appears to be an interesting reference book.

I, Row-Boat

I, Row-Boat was a very interesting story, I first listened to it when Cory Doctorow read the story on the craphound podcast a while back. You can listen to the podcasts of the story part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4. I was fascinated by the story and read it again, you can find the story as published on flurb.net . It is a story from after the emergence of AI and it follows a rowboat which has gained self-awareness. The rowboat is part of a scuba diving cruise ship, where people can project into one of the several human shells on the ship and experience scuba diving along the corral reefs. I greatly enjoyed the short story and loved it.

Tomorrow the Future

Ever get into the discussions of what tomorrow might bring and what technology might look like in 5, 10, or even 20 year? Slashdot had an article today "No More Coding From Scratch?" and that tied in with lunch discussion today. What will technology look like in 10-20 years? With Moore's Law technology has been increasing at a very rapid pace. Will we see a Technological Singularity within our lifetime? (for good or bad)

What type of computer interface will you be using in 10 years? Voice interface, dynamic reconfigurable and adaptive displays? We already have multi-touch displays which have been prototyped, and another here.

hmmm....


Will we be working with easy to use systems, which seamlessly integrate into our lives and are just part of society and life or will they still be items that you buy and use when you need a computer? Will we still be driving or with the computers drive better and smarter than us and get us around faster cheaper and safer?

How long will it be before you are asked how many processor core computer do you want and how many gigabytes of ram and terrabytes of harddrive space do you want?